Tom Anderson wrote:
On 1 Sep 2004, Boltar wrote:


"Piccadilly Pilot" wrote in message ...


OK the Piccadilly Line between Holborn and Cockfosters is relabelled
North and South. What about the rest of the line? What about the
Jubillee or the Bakerloo lines, how would you label them?

You label them in whatever direction they're going at that station
according to the map. You don't show it going north on a map then write
"westbound" on all the station signs.


There's also the issue of direction on the map vs direction on the ground,
which aren't always the same; the former corresponds to passengers' mental
model of the network, but it's also subject to change.


Or better yet do what other systems do and label them by their end
stations. Eg towards cockfosters or towards heathrow/uxbridge. This was
also done on the underground years ago. Not sure if it still is these
days.


I find labelling by terminus completely unhelpful -

Having lived in Paris (where they label by terminus) and London
(labelled by quasi-direction), I don't find it unhelpful at all.

unless you know the
network well enough to know the terminus of every line (which most
Londoners probably do, but visitors certainly don't)

But you think they would know that Westminster is East of South
Kensington, or that East Finchley is South of West Finchley?

, it means you need a
map to interpret the signs.

As, indeed, you do now. As Chris Tarrant says, "It's only easy if you
know" (or whatever it is).

And how would it work on lines that branch?
"Towards Edgware, High Barnet and Mill Hill East" is a bit of a mouthful.

Slightly. The fact that LU has more branches than (say) Paris, does make
more termini, though they certainly do this too. "Direction Villejuif
Louis Aragon/Mairie D/Ivry" is one, whilst another is the incredibly
long-winded "Direction Gabriel Peri
Asnieres-Gennevilliers/St-Denis-Universite" (that's only two - they just
have some stupidly long names for some of the termini).

How would it work on the circle line?

Wouldn't clockwise and anticlockwise be blindingly obvious? (That's not
a dig at you - I just can't believe it's not used already.) The current
labelling is chronically bad. If I am at Liverpool Street, I don't have
a CLUE (I've been there enough times - it just is not intuitive enough
for me to remember) which is East and which is West.

I think Liverpool Street would not
be improved by a platform called "Towards Hammersmith, Uxbridge, Amersham,
Chesham (sometimes), Watford and Liverpool Street (via Baker Street before
Tower Hill)".

It wouldn't hurt - at least you would have a clue if you were going to
one of those places - but it's even *more* long-winded than the
terminus-naming of course.

I think this is a matter of taste: i like the system where each direction
has one consistent name over the whole line.

I would too, if it were of any help, but to be honest I don't find it
particularly helpful (except on straightish lines) anyway.

Some of the problems with
this could be overcome by using 'fractional' compass points: the Picc, for
example, could have North-East and South-West directions (although in the
case of Uxbridge etc, this would be some new meaning of the term
'south-west' of which most people were previously not aware).

Well, if we wanted it to be twice as complicated as now, yep :-)

Don't ask me
how you'd name the Jubilee.

Stanmore - Stratford? :-) Easy, innit?

[snip lots of stuff where I'm just *sure* you're taking the ****!]

To be fair, the only downside of terminus-naming, compared to how it
works in Paris is the fact that trains almost always terminate at the
terminus in Paris, whereas in London they can end their journey at
various locations. But at least the passenger is on the right platform
and going in the right direction.

dave

dave