A new map of the London Underground created by a university lecturer who branded TfL’s classic map “garbage” has gone viral on social media.
The familiar, linear Tube map used across London every day is based on the original design drawn up by Henry Beck more than 90 years ago, in 1933.
But Maxwell Roberts, a lecturer in psychology at the University of Essex, has described it as “lamentable” and “in a neglected state of decline”, and has redrawn it in a radically different ‘circles and spokes’ layout.
Dr Roberts first created his circle-based diagrammatic map in 2013, but has now totally updated his design from 11 years ago.
He posted his new map on X, where it received more than one million engagements from users in just 24 hours.
“This is amazing,” wrote one user, while another described it as “wonderful”. Others helped point out minor errors and omissions, which Dr Roberts was quick to amend.
After eleven years, it's time to update my London Underground concentric-circles-and-spokes map. Completely redrawn from centre to edges, it's so much better than before, and more geographically accurate than the official map. pic.twitter.com/WMd8fkdphY
— Tube Map Central (@TubeMapCentral) August 6, 2024
“I wasn’t expecting it to go that crazy,” Dr Roberts, of Walton-on-the-Naze in Essex, told the BBC. “That’s the most crazy map I’ve ever released on social media.”
Sharing his map on LinkedIn, Dr Roberts wrote: “The current state of the official London Underground map is lamentable for all sorts of reasons.
“It has poor balance, simplicity, coherence and topographical accuracy.
“It fails by any criterion of effectiveness you can imagine and has been in a neglected state of decline for years. I caused a stir a few years ago calling it a ‘garbage piece of lazy design‘ and nothing has happened since to change my mind.”
Dr Roberts was inspired to update his 2013 design after seeing TfL had released a circle-style Tube map to advertise mobile phones.
“Lots of people said to me ‘look, TfL’s borrowed your ideas, you need to complain about this’,” he told the BBC.
“And I thought no, let’s not complain. Let’s go back to my original circles map, and let’s make it better this time.
“Let’s apply the design rules properly because I broke them a few times in the past. It’s a better design because it keeps the design rules more correctly, and I thought let’s get the geography right as well.
“I’ve tried to get the station clusters right. I thought ‘let’s make my circles map better than TfL’s in every way’.”
Dr Roberts said he was “captivated” when he first saw a map of the Underground at the age of five.
“There’s a conceptual beauty underlying any map,” he told the BBC. “I do like the way they show sort of possibilities and how things connect together, how places are organised.”
A TfL spokesperson said: “The Tube map is an iconic piece of world-renowned design, which was first created by Harry Beck in 1933 and has grown and evolved like the city it represents. It is widely used by millions of people every day and we have no plans to change its design.”
