As a tourist in London, the tube map was absolutely crucial. An app is great if you know what you're doing, but being able to check station for station that you're on the right line in the right direction is invaluable.
@@shockslice7632 A good paper map also lets you study things without having to zoom and pan around on a teeny tiny screen to study it... so it's great for an overview and just in general.
Agreed! A comprehensive train map is not something to be taken for granted as a tourist. I certainly didn’t take it for granted when I was in London, and I didn’t get lost once.
I'm now trying to work out if that's actually Jago or whether it's someone else that Jago has dubbed over. Not knowing what he looks like, it makes it very difficult to say!
When I was 12, my parents took me to London for the first time. They showed me how to read the tube map on the way into the centre and on the way back, they had me direct them without any help. Such a fond memory and now the tube map holds a very special place in my heart! This was fantastic, Jay!
Can i just say this style of video is absolutely timeless? For some youtubers, you cant even go back 2 years before you hit a style of video completely different from the reason youre subscribed today. But ive just been on a binge of jay foreman videos that stretch all the way back to 2014 and its like he released them yesterday. You have a superb style of video, great content!
I don't know how these guys do it, it's like he's predicted his success and knows his style has to be consistent.. or maybe that is *why* he's successful?
@@connorkapooh2002 he definitely knows what works xD. Also a slight correction to my original comment, the vids didn't go back to 2014...they went back to 2009 (the unfinished northern line video) His style is so superb hes been making TH-cam content for more than a decade in what is effectively the exact same way, but it always feels totally fresh and timeless. I'm pretty sure this is award worthy or something!
~Nah..he made all his videos in 1 year and is scheduled to release all videos sequentially so he can have a nice relaxing rest somewere while composing his next syllable out sync song
I'm mates with Jay in real life. When I lived on a narrowboat I offered for him to film any parts of Unfinished London about the canals as there's rich history and lots of weird stuff involved. He said "yeah, when I get round to it". Anyway, that was 3 years ago and I sold the boat a year and a half ago.
As a Glaswegian i was delighted to see our subway map in all its glory, must have took a team of planners a very long time to create such a clear, detailed and beautiful map. God bless them all.
@@SorchaSublime we already have a pretty good existing overground railway system which kind of negates the need for underground lines to the suburbs, which kind of sucks because more underground would be cool.
that last point is probably the most important of the video. A good tube map does encourage people to use more public transport, simply because it makes is look very easy and convenient to move around the entire city with the underground
I suppose that's one advantage of a more complicated map, you can stare at it for hours and it's perfectly reasonable for anyone walking by, 'Anti-Beck claims another' :) Having said that though, a Beck design deserves to be admired, so you could reasonably stand staring at that for hours too without question, and if anyone dare asks what you're doing, 'It's a masterpiece' is all you would have to say. :)
@@JayForeman You're not fooling us. Jago is in fact a disembodied spirit that roams the tube, informing bypassers on interesting matters such as the early corporate structure of the Piccadilly and Brompton Railway, only to occasionally be caught on film.
Thanks for this. I designed a 'tube' for the Lakeland Fells 12 years ago, which I named '"Tubular Fells". I lived and worked as a geography teacher in London at the time (living there for 23 years) and wanted to map the fells in honour of Harry Beck and that beacon of the English Lake District , Alfred Wainwright. I was a founder member of the Wainwright Society and I now live and work in Cumbria. The time and effort I took in order to emulate Harry Beck's work stretched my geeky approach, but I think I did alright and the resulting map has become quite iconic. It's a pleasing creation which adopted the basic rules of topology and I honoured both men by including their names. Ironically, Beck is a great name and addition for the map, meaning a mountain stream. I guess he was Harry Mountain Stream! Thanks for giving this explanation to us all. I will be directing people this way. Ad altiora!
I have a print on my hallway wall. As a fan of maps, the Lake District and Mike Oldfield it is one of my most treasured possessions. I’m very pleased I now get the chance to say thank you to you for producing it: Thank you. I’m also a Charlatans fan so to have the name Burgess on there is also a major plus!
@@therealcaldini And thanks to you for supporting me! Tubular Fells has brought me great pleasure and helped me to contribute to the protection of the place I love, in some small part. I never advertised, but through my enthusism it seemed to appear in every outdoor's publication, including The Guardian and even The Sun! I initially produced the map without any notion it would become so popular but it certainly resonated throughout the fellwalking world. I am so touched it has become a treasured possession; nay I am humbled. I am sure I could sort it, but if you would likle me to inscribe a map for you it would be my pleasure to get one to you. Reply and I am sure we can sort it. Peter Burgess
Important thing to note: The New York Subway map was not always a mess. Massimo Vignelli, who was a passionate believer in modernist graphic design, produced a Harry Beck-style map of the subway in 1972. It was perfect, and Vignelli is likely also turning 45 degrees in his grave as we speak
@@eattherich9215 @eattherich9215 Yeah, you're right. The MTA map is pretty good for figuring out which stop is closest to a specific location, something the Underground map can't really do. It also helps that NYC has a very rigid split between urban subways and suburban commuter rail vs London where the urban subways lines are just extended out to the suburbs to serve as commuter rail. That means there different maps at different scales for urban subways and suburban rail.
@@eattherich9215 That thing is, it doesn't matter. You know where you are starting and where you are trying to go, everything else in the middle is irrelevant. So having the map represent anything more than the route between the two stations is not very useful. And all that trying to fit geography makes the map substantially harder to read. When I first lived somewhere with a Beck style map, I hated it. But once I got used to it I realized my brain thinks in the same way as the map, based on transit points not actual geography.
@@88porpoise Read that New Yorkers wanted their subway map to be more geographically accurate, since some lines run closer to each other in parallel, so they could tell which line would be nearer to them. Fortunately I guess the subway largely follows the road network/layout there (as it's mostly cut & cover) which is more regular, so the map still doesn't look super messy
@@88porpoise the point is that you don’t know where you are going to go with regards to the subway stop. You know your final destination and a geographically accurate map helps figure out which subway stop you should go to get there. I will always defend the MTA map it’s wonderful.
As an occasional tourist from a different country, I very much like and want the river on the map. it helps ground the map and makes it very easy to me to mentally overlap the tube map to my google maps version. A few landmarks (like rivers and very important stations) are the perfect translation layer between the traditional paper maps and flexible/moving digital ones
I've never been to London, but as an occasional home ground visitor to Prague which does use the river in most of its maps (except the flattened metro line overview in the metro cars themselves), I agree that the river is a useful point of reference.
It's definitely useful for helping to decide which stations/routes to use. It's no use being close to your destination, if you're the wrong side of the river (especially if not near a bridge)!
I never skip Jay and Internet Historian's sponsor segments because they're hilarious. On occasion I'll even listen to Max Miller's ones because you have to reward those amazing segues he does.
I didn't realise it was him until the phrase "You are the ungrateful corporation to my lifetime of service"... and then it clicked. :) Also great to see Tim Traveller, but with a different voice!
As a New Yorker I thoroughly appreciated the Tube map when I first moved to London. I think it still serves an incredible purpose, even if it's just a visual aid you glance at while you're waiting for your train. The fact that it isn't this spaghetti-like mess splayed onto the literal map of the city makes it so much easier to understand where you're going. Also on the accessibility info, I think if the day comes when every station is fully accessible, then the symbol would be a moot point, but until then I will continue to feel betrayed by Marylebone for not having a lift from its tube platform despite being a National Rail station. 🙃
There is one drawback to the accessibility info tho - sometimes it is USELESS. King’s Cross St Pancras tube station (said in that way because King’s Cross, St Pancras and the tube station are 3 separate things that don’t connect easily) is shit. I want to murder whoever designed it. Yes, it had lifts…BUT YOU NEED A DIAGRAM TO UNDERSTAND THE LIFTS. Every different bit is a long walk away from all the other bits in an overly complicated clusterfuck of floors. It’s all well and good to be step free to the street, but it’s not overly helpful if you put massive horrible walkways in between the various lifts you need to get up to the surface in the right spot. It is nightmarish and not even all that accessible! AND IT SERVES 2 MAJOR TRAIN STATIONS! PEOPLE HAVE SUITCASES! I don’t currently use a wheelchair (they’re expensive, I’m a student), but I do have some pretty bad mobility issues and trying to get up to King’s Cross today to catch a train to get back to uni almost gave me a panic attack, on top of the fact my elbows started subluxing, my knees decided simply to give up on me and my heart tried to take me out and give me a concussion. The symbol gives the false impression that the station is decently accessible for those with mobility issues, but it isn’t! It’s TERRIBLE! There should be a caveat off something. yeah there are lifts but you’ll spend 5 minutes just trying to get to the fucker only to find out it’s the wrong damn lift or it is the right lift but the fucking diagram JUST TELLING YOU WHICH LIFT GOES TO WHICH FLOOR AND WHAT STREET IT CONNECTS TO (and station you’d want) is a lying bastard and if you want King’s cross station lift C is perfectly acceptable you don’t have to go and hunt for lift b, which isn’t even helpfully signposted, and walk (if this is something you can even sort of manage to do) for several more minutes just to find out you’ve gone the wrong way. I doubt it’s accessible for wheelchair uses just based on the arm workout you’d get trying to navigate the bastard.
@@poisonedkilljoy9304 Haven't had the pleasure of trying to find my way around the Kings Cross St Pancras lifts, but even the lift system at Green Park is a nightmare. I had cause to use it recently and there were three separate lifts with significant walks between each one to get from the lowest level (can't remember which line that is) to the street level. While I was mildly incapacitated (hence the need to use the lifts - something I've never needed before) and was at least able to manage the lengthy walk, I can't imagine what it must be like for someone who has more severe physical challenges to get out of there. It doesn't seem like a good enough system.
Thank you for catering to the much underserved demographic of people who are both regular Radio 4 listeners and geeky YT content consumers. I'd like to think I'm one of about a dozen people who knew what you were leading up to as soon as the trombones were audible.
For my own future reference 1:30 settle for suburbia (*ockfosters) 2:00 Sydney and Paris 3:39 Harry's dream and young Hutchinson 4:28 Jay's rant 5:04 summarized letters 6:05 RIP Harry Beck and his glasses 7:07 Harry Beck superfan 8:18 hashtag 10:13 Mark and advert If someone else is reading this, just watch carefully and pause to read all text in the video. #splittheovergroundintodifferentcoloursandnamestomakeiteasiertoreadonthemapandlessconfusingfortouristsandcommutersalikeespeciallywhenitcomestotemporaryclosuresanddelays
I was about to type just the same. I think the sponsor(s?) should pay him some extra. He doesn't just make an _extra_ effort at making the viewers actually watch them but they, in fact, watch it. At least the two of us.
I remember the family confusion when they unveiled the plaque at Finchley Central. He either used West Finchley or Highgate depending on whether he was at home or at his parents. As well as further Underground Maps, he would also 'invent' things, but they were never that great. My grandfather, who was an engineer, would often sit with Harry and explain why they would never work.
2:13 this just shows the dedication in these videos. he had to hire an extra and find a bunch of French clothes for them to wear. then they had to learn a whole conversation in French completely fluently just for a 5 second gag. What a guy!
They did not, however, employ said extra to record his own rendition of the ISIHAC theme. That was a bit of a missed opportunity, given what Tim did with the BBC News theme.
@@JayForeman Again, though, giving Tim a twist instead of a hornpipe is somewhat of a missed opportunity. (-: By the way, they were still sometimes giving the 'phone number as Abbey 1234 at the start of the 1970s.
Back in 2007 when I visited London in a work related trip from Kolkata(which that time was the only city in India to have a metro, but it was just a single line Edit: beside Delhi which started in 2002, ), The very first day I laid my eyes on the map, I got so impressed by it, I had never seen anything like that before and yet it took me minutes to figure out, it was so intuitive and I could literally go anywhere in and around London...point to note here is, I was just 22 and hardly travelled alone anywhere in India at that point of my life...and it was my first trip abroad...that map was the biggest reason I got accustomed to London in just few days..I met and interacted and did a lot of things with many, many people there during my month long stay and nobody believed me when I said I was just a visitor.
Slight correction, Delhi metro was operational since 2002. By 2007 it had two big lines which were running near full capacity. Source: I was there using the metro.
in my experience the usability and intuitive design is impressive even when it comes to navigating in the subway, same goes for the airports in london. at least in my experience compared to any other subway system or airport ive used. its hard almost impossible at times, to take the wrong turn.
Oh my god another Bengali! Though I didn’t grow up in India, I fondly remembered seeing the trams go by in Kolkata during the summer. It’s a shame they’ve practically gotten rid of them all, seeing as that was a defining symbol of the city :(
Never mind Jago, that looked an awful lot like the Tim Traveller being French. And at the line massive tube nerds… why no cut to Geoff? It’s kind of conspicuously missing.
Getting excited over a Jago Hazzard cameo in a Jay Foreman video feels like the pinnacle of London transport youtuber nerdery and I'm here for it. Fantastic video as always!
I'd personally argue that replacing the map with an app would be a poor decision I was a tourist in London (among other cities) earlier this year and I found the map to be vital to trying to find my way around and honestly didn't even know that there was an app, and even then with no reception in the deep tube stations it would be considerably more difficult to use the app, especially as a first time visitor
What about a hybrid approach? A digital version of the map where you can hide the details you don't want would allow people to get the info they need at a glance.
@@AndrewMcColl And perhaps places where the map needs to be tiny could have a "simplified" version, which has only your current transport type + what services it will connect to (eg. just a tube map with symbols indicating "main line rail", "tram", "ferry" and so on at stations where the tube connects to those, and for trams a similar map but with only trams and symbols for the tube)
@@mennoltvanalten7260 that's the beauty with a digital version, you can make it work for you. Especially useful if you're only able to use stations with disabled access.
I played and paused the videos for several times from 7:40 to 7:50 to see the maps and caption. I am surprised by maps of different places and as a Hongkonger,I also feel happy about seeing the MTR map of Hong Kong :)
I just came back from Hong Kong for geography dissertation fieldwork! (Not about the MTR haha) but I do love your map system and overall tube network over there, it’s so well done! Really love the city ❤ love from London!
“Perfection is achieved not when there is nothing more to add, but when there is nothing left to take away.” The modern tube map designers should pin that above their desks.
I can explain the hypnotic bit of melbourne's map for those curious. That is a set of four tunnels linking the five stations inside the city loop together. This prevents trains having to terminate in the city and stop, thus increasing capacity. All the lines running currently diverge from one of those five stations
My favourite thing was that the caption described the map as "like a spider", as when the rail lines were originally being laid out, the planners described it as the "octopus map". The Railway Construction Act of 1884 was commonly referred to as the Octopus Act, and that was before they decided to add the City Loop into the system!
@@lachlanmcgowan5712 ha, good shout! My favourite Melbourne rail oddity is how we had an Inner Circle before an underground loop, and it was the most inconvenient, useless and time-consuming Inner Circle ever conceived.
I get really anxious being on the tube (and in London in general, it’s too busy and crowded for my liking) and I find it really helps to stare at the maps on the tube and count the stops I have left before I get off or follow all the tube lines to pass the time and distract me
8:35 triggers my incandescent rage for the inaccurate accessibility information on the Bakerloo line. The map says a few stations have ramp access onto the trains (and the TfL Go app specifically says it's ramp access, for each of the platforms) but they don't, because the cars have a step down into them as they're lower than the platform. As a wheelchair user with very limited cognitive and physical energy, I can tell you I did NOT appreciate wasting an entire hour of the journey finding that out!
I am from New Zealand and while on my Gap Year in London I was entranced by the Tube Map. I would spend my weekends by randomly picking a station on the map then I would book a hotel and explore the area for a couple days. It was amazing. I saw so many random little places that I never would’ve normally seen
I moved to London 3 months ago, and this is exactly what my wife and I do on the weekends to explore London. It's amazing how often we find something really fun/interesting by doing this!
@@caleballen4721 I was born and raised in London and have lived here for a little over 20 years, and I still remember exploring what a random station had in store for us when I went there with friends. It was great fun, and I'd do it again too. That station was Limehouse on the DLR if you're interested!
Oh wow, I can't believe you managaed to get Mark Cooper-Jones from the web series "Map Men" on a video! Hopefully there's more collaborations with him!
On the note of the New York subway, it's designed to be proportioned true to life, as the vast majority of people in the boroughs travel primarily by foot, so knowing distance as it truly is is vital. They've tried a back-style map in the past and it was disliked to put it nicely.
over here in the Europes we have apps where we plunk in where we are or will be and it tells us how far we have to walk to catch a bus or train, but of course up here in Northern Europe walking distance is 3 km, which is 10 times the distance where the typical American demand a car
@@thesteelrodent1796 WDYM, Google Maps does tell that for much of the world's cities, app support is not something where Europe would stand out particularly. Manhattan is pretty big, so regardless what's your "the distance where typical you demand a subway ride" it can be quite useful to have a map which shows when the distance is twice that. And that was Gabriel's point I think. Not a dick measuring contest about who walks longer.
@@thesteelrodent1796 Europeans thinking they are unique for doing something the entire world does while shitting on Americans for being close minded never gets old
Jug Cerovic's map idea is absolute beauty; traditional, contemporary, and simplicity, and joyous, all wrapped up in a ball of clear definable lines. And it includes the parks!
Wow another video on London a place I have never visited in a country I have never been too! Really excited to watch it! No joke though I love the effort put in by Jay in the video to make it interesting for all of us.
Everything you do is so funny that I forget that I'm actually learning something! Who could've guess that a guy from Vancouver, BC, Canada could find videos about the London tube map so entertaining! Well done! All that said, I'm really missing map men. I do hope you guys will be be producing more episodes! Cheers!
I love the commentary on all the copy cat maps. Also, as a Melbournian, our map may be very pretty and hypnotic, but only because everything only connects in the city loop. I’m all for ruining it with upgrades, the next big plan will ruin it even more, but don’t worry it’s not due for completion till 2050 and most of the stops and connections are in the East anyway, so it probably won’t help improve services either. 😂
I cannot believe the powerhouse of characters in this Map Men, I mean Unfinished London episode! Seeing Half-asleep Chris make a cameo ❤ and Jago’s unexpected face reveal is surprising I love it
I wanted to respond enthusiastically about The Tim Traveller’s cameo, but then I heard Jago’s voice. Reading the comments, it apparently is actually him. What really blows my mind is that we have watched him in part 1, two months ago, not knowing it was him… Nice one. 👍
People were saying that Jay having a literal child for a Surfshark ad was dedication, but he legit wait until he had a spot then recorded himself brushing his teeth with the spot and zoomed in on it so it's super obvious, for an ad.
The Mexico City metro map is a beauty and possibly exceptional! It has individual icons that relate to the name of the station making it navigable without having to read.
Indeed, as a foreigner, I use the map to plan my journeys around London and it really encourages me to hop on a train and start exploring! (but it's also confusing, mainly because of additional non-tube services added) Lovely video! I'm glad Harry Beck eventually got the deserved recognition!
@Real Aiglon For me, someone who has no idea who any of these people are, what's amazing about it is simply the wide cast of characters that makes these videos so lively and fun!
That has be to be the best sponsored content ever. absolutely epic. Also the last alternative map you showed was excellent, someone put a lot of work into that
@@Nooticus Thanks! I love stuff like that. He really understands the principals of Harry Becks original concept. Why have TfL made such a mess of the Elizabeth line at Moorgate/Liverpool st., for example? Cerovic has totally understood the idea to keep it as uncomplicated as possible
The overground lines in a different shade too! genius. I hate the way that just about every time you sit on an overground train, the map opposite you is of a different line to the one you are using, so is totally irrelevant and darn right confusing to any tourists.
I just realized that all those amazing online maps you showed could be used now, it's representing the same thing so if it's easier to read for certain people they can still use it. I love maps!!
I’d love a whole video on how bad the tube is for accessibility. I often feel the need to visit London for my work, but given that it’s basically impossible to get around on the tube to the archives I need to go to I just don’t, and my work suffers.
It's also relevant to anyone with elderly parents or kids in a buggy. When I had a kid and my parents came to visit, it wildly changed where we went and how we got there, swapping eg "one train" with "a train to somewhere else, followed by a bus"
@@crash.override Or just have a symbol to show which stations are not accessible, rather than having symbols on all of the ones that are. A symbol which alerts you to which ones are not accessible is much more useful than cluttering the map by throwing an accessible symbol on all of them.
@@SleepyHarryZzz No-one seems to have worked out the implications for alternate Wednesdays when there is an R in the month, especially if an opponent is in nid.
@@MunchMan But wasn't that deemed illegal retrospectively, as under the 1963 Boseman interpretation that originally ruled on backwards doubles? In any case it is surely not in the spirit of the game. See the Dee era ruling on Cockfosters.
I have an image of all these legends having an amazing premiere party with this on in a London flat somewhere and so they should. Tim was spit-take funny and the Jago face-reveal was just incredible. What a triumph!
Yup, my mate's grandad bought two flats literally right next to the Tooting Bec tube station (about 300 metres away). Bought them both for £3000, yes £1500 each! Which was still considered a shitload of money in 1971). These flats are BIG too! His mum lived downstairs and he and his family lived in the flat upstairs. My mate's mum inherited them around 2000 and she sold the pair for... £1.5 million! It's now a building of five smaller flats.
London should either adopt what we do in Sydney, and have a separate map for all Light Rail/Tram services, as well as have the Overground lines in different colours (like you mentioned), making the London Tube map solely a map for Trains whilst having a London Tram map in the same style for all non-train services (i.e. DLR and Tram). However, the much better option would be to appoint one of the designers that you showed to design the tube map to make it both useful and beautiful (as you put it). As all of London's Rail Networks are all interconnected and complement each other making a commute via. Public Transport in London so much easier compared to other cities around the world, the whole system (including the map itself) would suffer without any one of those rail networks in use (or displayed on the tube map). Great video as always Jay.
It’s like a Who’s Who of British TH-camrs! Great to see Tim and Jago. I can’t wait for the next one where Tom Scott is the Duke of Edinburgh and Drachinifel is a captain of the Woolwich Ferry. Maybe even James Hoffman could be the hot beverage person at 55 Broadway! Excited!
On a trip to New York some years ago I found the Subway map such a confusing mish-mash that I sat up all night trying to design a London-style diagrammatic version. Then I visited the New York Transit Museum and discovered that this had already been done - and rejected on the grounds that it made everything look far too complicated. But yes, the London map is going down the far-too-complicated route itself these days. It now has nine (count 'em, NINE) zones - or ten, if you include the weird Zone 2/3, a distinctly separate thing from Zone 2 or Zone 3, which exists for no apparent reason. It looks like the Zoning Committee had a massive argument between the Zone Two-ers and the Zone Three-ites, which they could only resolve by fudging up a kind of neutral territory which counts as both zones and neither.
They wanted the new developments in east London (particularly Stratford) to be in the same zone as Canary Wharf, basically. (Without knocking it out of the east end of the DLR. I used to live in Custom House (zone 3) and would walk to Canning Town (zone 2/3) because it was cheaper to go to central London from there.)
That reminds me a lot of what happened in Prague recently. See, they simplified it! Everywhere you go in Prague it's just Prague! Simple! Easy! Well, except for when you're not from Prague and come to Prague with the expanded Prague integrated system from outside of Prague, in which case the same stop can be two or maybe even three different zones (I'm not even sure now) depending on which mode of public transport you're using. How many zones exactly are you using up if you switch between modes of transport? No idea. I think even the conductors on the trains aren't sure.
@@beth12svist i remember having 180 stations and no zones in my city. But than some outside-going railways got integrated with the metro and there are zoned. And there 241 stations now (without these additional railways). It got confusing for me now. On other hand - i don't think i will live here for long now.
As someone who used to get the tube as a local and now just uses it as a tourist, I think it still very much has a place. It might be because I already have a decent understanding of it, but I much prefer looking through the tube map to see where to go than using any app. Once you have wrapped your head around it and learned some of the basic lines, it can sometimes be faster than unlocking your phone, finding the app, and typing in the station names. Not to mention, if you're already in the tube, you have no access to internet in order to use those apps, so you need to use a normal tube map. It's better to just acclimate yourself to it than to rely on an app and then flounder when you don't have it. For tourists, it allows you to customize. For a trip to London, there's so much crammed in the one city that it is better to be creative with things rather than strictly going from A to B, then later backtracking to go to C, then going back past B to get to D, etc. I do think they should separate some aspects of it. Is anyone actually getting River Bus services to get from point A to B in London? No, so why is it on a map for transportation? Sure, it might be a lovely thing to do, but so are most of the sights in London. Why isn't the British Museum marked on there? Or the V&A? Or the London Eye? Or Elizabeth Tower and Houses of Parliament? Equally, the Overground is a big enough line at this point to have its own separate map. On the Overground map (which would inherently be less cluttered than the general Tube map), you could have special markings to denote that the station is shared with the Underground, but otherwise, it's not very necessary. They just don't want to do that because then the Overground would make less money.
Ugh I know, the DLR, Overground, and Trams should get their own maps with their own line colours. They have a National Rail connection symbol, so why not similar for those? You say why not have various museums marked, but I’d go far as to say why not have the bus routes if they want to be consistent! I will admit the first time I used the DLR I only knew about it because of the unified map, but honestly there’s still a place for the very large unified maps, it’s just no good for the pocket one. As evidenced by how the map which ALSO incorporates the national rail services is only available in some stations. Why are the other TfL modes not part of the other in that schema for the Tube map? And if they want a completionist map, then it’s insufficient. As you say though, it’s all about advertising TfL services and not advertising the others’. I hate when business reasons win against public utility reasons…
Well done Jay. Your wish of splitting the overground into different colours and such has come true. And thanks to this, the former Watford DC line out of Euston now looks like it's part of the bloody central line
As a (long term) tourist in a foreign city, the tube map is one of the very few navigation tools that works reliably and hasn't failed me in my three months stay. Not having a tube map and expecting people to use apps, would be the same as using google maps, but removing all the streets that aren't on your route. It would be just madness, especially if you don't have a destination yet or are planning a day trip. Long story short: public transit maps are essential.
Holy shit, I was happy enough with an Australian city being mentioned but a cameo from Dan Illic playing Dame Edna as the boss of Sydney subway was top shelf
7:46 want to mention that the Hong Kong map is the older version. The new version have brown and purple connected, and as a Hong Konger I hate the two lines swapping
Actually apropos of collaborations, I think we need a mega video featuring Tim Traveller, Jay Foreman, Jago Hazzard, Tom Scott, Geoff Marshall, Paul & Rebecca Whitewick, and Pete and his Bus. Someone please "make it so!"
I never use a planner to get around on the Tube; I always look at the map and manually plot out my journey. Sure, a planner would find the most efficient route and do it quicker, but there's no comparison to the joy of tracing out a route by eye. It makes the journey more satisfying too.
9:36 My wife and I visited London and the UK for the first time a few years ago and not having to use international data/mobile service (we're Unitedstatesians) and being able to have a physical map to navigate the Tube was a godsend.
I travelled to London with my late wife in 2019 and using the Tube map was one of our favorite things. Having travelled there before, I'd told her how much easier it was to get around and know just where the hell you were. I may as well mention she was from New York. She was so surprised and delighted by it and we had almost as fun getting *around* London as we did doing things *in* London.
Haha! I went through all of part one, and half of part two before understanding the "Harry Beck" was Jago Hazzard! Your cameos are the best! Thanks for the excellent videos as ever!
2:15 “absolutely not, it's not possible, the very idea of a dirty Englishman drawing the plan for the new Parisian Metro but that doesn't make sense, right?” Lmao attention to detail is top notch
I was in London a couple of weeks around the turn of the century and the tube map worked quite well for me, I never got lost on the tube, but the few times I used a bus I ended up in random locations and had to find a tube to get where I wanted. I ended up only using the buses when I wanted to sit up top and just see things with no plan.
All this time we were looking Jago playing Harry Beck and we never knew what he really looked like. It's great to see all the transport and map enthusiasts together.
totally agree that a lot of clutter can and should be removed, but not the accessibility info. that is vital, and disabled commuters should be able to see it quickly and easily. their commute is already complicated enough i imagine, judging by how little stations are actually fully step-free from train to street. ofc the true solution is to make everything accessible so the info is redundant, as someone else in this comment section has already suggested. but until then it should always remain on the map
8:23 he’ll be happy to know that overground finally has different lines nearly a year on from this vid
The true power of a good hashtag
And they're awful names too
Mark's reaction in the end is hysterical
I'd say it was a remarkably calm reaction in the circumstances, actually.
@Jау Fоrеman 🅥I'm not dumb
@Jау Fоrеman 🅥 fake jay formen
Spoiler
He’s also not wrong.
I was sure you were joking about the IKEA symbols on the map. But then I looked it up and they are indeed on the map. That's absolutely wild. Wow.
Why is it on the map?
"because they paid"
They are not on the TfL Go map, yet, so at least I don’t see them
Capitalism wins once again sadly
Maybe london needs to put the locations for kfc on the tube map as well.
@@HannahHäggAutisticTransWoman or Pret A Manger. You probably couldn’t see anything else then. Haha
As a tourist in London, the tube map was absolutely crucial. An app is great if you know what you're doing, but being able to check station for station that you're on the right line in the right direction is invaluable.
also no bloody internet in the tube, good luck with your apps then
@@shockslice7632 Every trip planner I've used had offline functionality, as long as you remembered to open the app recently when you have signal
@@shockslice7632 A good paper map also lets you study things without having to zoom and pan around on a teeny tiny screen to study it... so it's great for an overview and just in general.
Agreed! A comprehensive train map is not something to be taken for granted as a tourist. I certainly didn’t take it for granted when I was in London, and I didn’t get lost once.
The “this could’ve been a map men episode” bit made me almost spit my drink out from laughing. This episode was so good!!! Thanks!!
@here is the full clip here is the number ov people falling for this shit:
I only realised at that point I wasn't watching Map Men
Tube men, tube men, tube-tube-tube men-tube-men men tube.
Men map men nap men men men map map map... Map
Map Man, Map Man, Map Map Map, Man Man Man
"You are the ungrateful corporation to my lifetime of loyal service." hit me in the feels.
I agree, nice Jago reference there!
@@raakone and made by Jago himself. Loved that bit.
@@raakone It actually is Jago.
With a pillow in the belly area... It is noticeable since the pillow only fills the area between the suspenders...
I never wanted to know what Jago Hazzard looked like. 😞
Hearing Jagos voice come out of “Harry beck” was extremely unexpected! What a pleasant surprise
"Jago"! Great cameo. Love it!
just what i was thinking!
I'm now trying to work out if that's actually Jago or whether it's someone else that Jago has dubbed over. Not knowing what he looks like, it makes it very difficult to say!
@@andrewwebb3431 maybe that’s the reason for the glasses
Stealth face reveal? 🤯
When I was 12, my parents took me to London for the first time. They showed me how to read the tube map on the way into the centre and on the way back, they had me direct them without any help. Such a fond memory and now the tube map holds a very special place in my heart! This was fantastic, Jay!
Can i just say this style of video is absolutely timeless? For some youtubers, you cant even go back 2 years before you hit a style of video completely different from the reason youre subscribed today. But ive just been on a binge of jay foreman videos that stretch all the way back to 2014 and its like he released them yesterday. You have a superb style of video, great content!
I don't know how these guys do it, it's like he's predicted his success and knows his style has to be consistent.. or maybe that is *why* he's successful?
@@connorkapooh2002 he definitely knows what works xD.
Also a slight correction to my original comment, the vids didn't go back to 2014...they went back to 2009 (the unfinished northern line video)
His style is so superb hes been making TH-cam content for more than a decade in what is effectively the exact same way, but it always feels totally fresh and timeless. I'm pretty sure this is award worthy or something!
~Nah..he made all his videos in 1 year and is scheduled to release all videos sequentially so he can have a nice relaxing rest somewere while composing his next syllable out sync song
I'm mates with Jay in real life. When I lived on a narrowboat I offered for him to film any parts of Unfinished London about the canals as there's rich history and lots of weird stuff involved.
He said "yeah, when I get round to it". Anyway, that was 3 years ago and I sold the boat a year and a half ago.
I thought this video was made 10 years ago, I didn't realize it was new till I checked the date.
As a Glaswegian i was delighted to see our subway map in all its glory, must have took a team of planners a very long time to create such a clear, detailed and beautiful map. God bless them all.
It honestly is shocking. Youd think theyd add at least one line at some point over the years.
How do you get around? That looks like mayhem.
7:49 for others looking, but you’ll have to start/stop or go frame by frame on a computer to see it!
@@SorchaSublime we already have a pretty good existing overground railway system which kind of negates the need for underground lines to the suburbs, which kind of sucks because more underground would be cool.
Best map
that last point is probably the most important of the video. A good tube map does encourage people to use more public transport, simply because it makes is look very easy and convenient to move around the entire city with the underground
How many millions of unwanted conversations and awkward eye contact moments have been avoided just reading the map while travelling on the Tube ?
I suppose that's one advantage of a more complicated map, you can stare at it for hours and it's perfectly reasonable for anyone walking by, 'Anti-Beck claims another' :)
Having said that though, a Beck design deserves to be admired, so you could reasonably stand staring at that for hours too without question, and if anyone dare asks what you're doing, 'It's a masterpiece' is all you would have to say. :)
Can’t make eye contact or even smile on the London Underground. It’s the unwritten rules.
Truly makes you proud to be a londoner. Now if only Beck could invent a design that keeps the damn tourists out of my god damn way in his underground.
That’s so British lol
Spoken like a true Londoner
Harry Beck voicing Jago Hazzard was a skillful, deft touch. Well played sir.
Not just voicing. That’s his face too.
@@JayForeman You're not fooling us. Jago is in fact a disembodied spirit that roams the tube, informing bypassers on interesting matters such as the early corporate structure of the Piccadilly and Brompton Railway, only to occasionally be caught on film.
Also the Tim Traveller starring as the Frenchman - nice!
@@THjelm Is this the MCU of transport based educational TH-cam videos?
Thought I recognised the voice. Thanks
Tim's acting was incredible, one of his best
Hey look Jay, you're big enough to be impersonated by robots now!
@Jау Fоrеman 🅥 you are quite obviously not the real jay foreman
That wasn't Tim but some French relative of his.
I fear Tim"s lines might have been misunderstood or mistranslated. Never mind, I'm sure it was all in the modern spirit of Pan-european cooperation.
Backs Victoria line map is truly gorgeous. The way he keeps the new line straight, showing it as modern and new is genuinely masterful
Thanks for this. I designed a 'tube' for the Lakeland Fells 12 years ago, which I named '"Tubular Fells". I lived and worked as a geography teacher in London at the time (living there for 23 years) and wanted to map the fells in honour of Harry Beck and that beacon of the English Lake District , Alfred Wainwright. I was a founder member of the Wainwright Society and I now live and work in Cumbria. The time and effort I took in order to emulate Harry Beck's work stretched my geeky approach, but I think I did alright and the resulting map has become quite iconic. It's a pleasing creation which adopted the basic rules of topology and I honoured both men by including their names. Ironically, Beck is a great name and addition for the map, meaning a mountain stream. I guess he was Harry Mountain Stream! Thanks for giving this explanation to us all. I will be directing people this way. Ad altiora!
I have a print on my hallway wall. As a fan of maps, the Lake District and Mike Oldfield it is one of my most treasured possessions. I’m very pleased I now get the chance to say thank you to you for producing it: Thank you. I’m also a Charlatans fan so to have the name Burgess on there is also a major plus!
@@therealcaldini And thanks to you for supporting me! Tubular Fells has brought me great pleasure and helped me to contribute to the protection of the place I love, in some small part. I never advertised, but through my enthusism it seemed to appear in every outdoor's publication, including The Guardian and even The Sun! I initially produced the map without any notion it would become so popular but it certainly resonated throughout the fellwalking world. I am so touched it has become a treasured possession; nay I am humbled. I am sure I could sort it, but if you would likle me to inscribe a map for you it would be my pleasure to get one to you. Reply and I am sure we can sort it. Peter Burgess
This is absolutely brilliant. Do you have a website I can buy one from so you make as much money as possible?
Bro speaks yapanese 💀💀💀💀💀
Wait, Jago Hazzard's face reveal was on A CHANNEL THAT WASN'T HIS OWN?! AND WAS REVEALED BY HAVING HIM SAY HIS CATCHPHRASE AS HIS ONE AND ONLY LINE?!
pretty mental
Actually blew my mind.
literally spewed my drinks out
I think that has to be the most Jago way it could have happened haha
I was shooketh when I heard it...
Important thing to note: The New York Subway map was not always a mess. Massimo Vignelli, who was a passionate believer in modernist graphic design, produced a Harry Beck-style map of the subway in 1972. It was perfect, and Vignelli is likely also turning 45 degrees in his grave as we speak
The London tube man is not really representative of what is above ground. The MTA map looks as if it might echo what is above ground.
@@eattherich9215 @eattherich9215 Yeah, you're right. The MTA map is pretty good for figuring out which stop is closest to a specific location, something the Underground map can't really do. It also helps that NYC has a very rigid split between urban subways and suburban commuter rail vs London where the urban subways lines are just extended out to the suburbs to serve as commuter rail. That means there different maps at different scales for urban subways and suburban rail.
@@eattherich9215 That thing is, it doesn't matter.
You know where you are starting and where you are trying to go, everything else in the middle is irrelevant. So having the map represent anything more than the route between the two stations is not very useful. And all that trying to fit geography makes the map substantially harder to read.
When I first lived somewhere with a Beck style map, I hated it. But once I got used to it I realized my brain thinks in the same way as the map, based on transit points not actual geography.
@@88porpoise Read that New Yorkers wanted their subway map to be more geographically accurate, since some lines run closer to each other in parallel, so they could tell which line would be nearer to them. Fortunately I guess the subway largely follows the road network/layout there (as it's mostly cut & cover) which is more regular, so the map still doesn't look super messy
@@88porpoise the point is that you don’t know where you are going to go with regards to the subway stop. You know your final destination and a geographically accurate map helps figure out which subway stop you should go to get there. I will always defend the MTA map it’s wonderful.
As an occasional tourist from a different country, I very much like and want the river on the map. it helps ground the map and makes it very easy to me to mentally overlap the tube map to my google maps version. A few landmarks (like rivers and very important stations) are the perfect translation layer between the traditional paper maps and flexible/moving digital ones
"the river helps ground the map"
Fun
I agree, the river seems like the least intrusive and most useful non train-related detail on any tube map
If your got the River on the map ! the paper becomes all soggy
I've never been to London, but as an occasional home ground visitor to Prague which does use the river in most of its maps (except the flattened metro line overview in the metro cars themselves), I agree that the river is a useful point of reference.
It's definitely useful for helping to decide which stations/routes to use. It's no use being close to your destination, if you're the wrong side of the river (especially if not near a bridge)!
Glad to see you got Harry Beck to be played by Jago Hazzard. I love his videos!
I think Jay is the only TH-camr whose sponsor segments I actually look forward to. I hope they pay him a bonus!
Absolutely agree!!
Jay and Brutalmoose
I never skip Jay and Internet Historian's sponsor segments because they're hilarious. On occasion I'll even listen to Max Miller's ones because you have to reward those amazing segues he does.
Daniel Thrasher is also excellent at this!
He's a comedian, and his comedy is gold.
Seeing jago hazard in this episode is awesome!
It is him is it? The voice is so distinctive.
Yes!!! Knew it was him immediately 😁👏👏👏👏
@@yorkiegrit and the phrase he used too.
For a second I was like "Hey, I heard this voice before" and then it hit me xD
I didn't realise it was him until the phrase "You are the ungrateful corporation to my lifetime of service"... and then it clicked. :)
Also great to see Tim Traveller, but with a different voice!
Having Jago Hazzard revealed as Harry Beck was truly a moment.
As a New Yorker I thoroughly appreciated the Tube map when I first moved to London. I think it still serves an incredible purpose, even if it's just a visual aid you glance at while you're waiting for your train. The fact that it isn't this spaghetti-like mess splayed onto the literal map of the city makes it so much easier to understand where you're going.
Also on the accessibility info, I think if the day comes when every station is fully accessible, then the symbol would be a moot point, but until then I will continue to feel betrayed by Marylebone for not having a lift from its tube platform despite being a National Rail station. 🙃
I'm glad they're trying to introduce the diagram-style maps again for the subway.
There is one drawback to the accessibility info tho - sometimes it is USELESS. King’s Cross St Pancras tube station (said in that way because King’s Cross, St Pancras and the tube station are 3 separate things that don’t connect easily) is shit. I want to murder whoever designed it. Yes, it had lifts…BUT YOU NEED A DIAGRAM TO UNDERSTAND THE LIFTS. Every different bit is a long walk away from all the other bits in an overly complicated clusterfuck of floors. It’s all well and good to be step free to the street, but it’s not overly helpful if you put massive horrible walkways in between the various lifts you need to get up to the surface in the right spot. It is nightmarish and not even all that accessible! AND IT SERVES 2 MAJOR TRAIN STATIONS! PEOPLE HAVE SUITCASES! I don’t currently use a wheelchair (they’re expensive, I’m a student), but I do have some pretty bad mobility issues and trying to get up to King’s Cross today to catch a train to get back to uni almost gave me a panic attack, on top of the fact my elbows started subluxing, my knees decided simply to give up on me and my heart tried to take me out and give me a concussion. The symbol gives the false impression that the station is decently accessible for those with mobility issues, but it isn’t! It’s TERRIBLE!
There should be a caveat off something. yeah there are lifts but you’ll spend 5 minutes just trying to get to the fucker only to find out it’s the wrong damn lift or it is the right lift but the fucking diagram JUST TELLING YOU WHICH LIFT GOES TO WHICH FLOOR AND WHAT STREET IT CONNECTS TO (and station you’d want) is a lying bastard and if you want King’s cross station lift C is perfectly acceptable you don’t have to go and hunt for lift b, which isn’t even helpfully signposted, and walk (if this is something you can even sort of manage to do) for several more minutes just to find out you’ve gone the wrong way. I doubt it’s accessible for wheelchair uses just based on the arm workout you’d get trying to navigate the bastard.
@@poisonedkilljoy9304 Haven't had the pleasure of trying to find my way around the Kings Cross St Pancras lifts, but even the lift system at Green Park is a nightmare. I had cause to use it recently and there were three separate lifts with significant walks between each one to get from the lowest level (can't remember which line that is) to the street level. While I was mildly incapacitated (hence the need to use the lifts - something I've never needed before) and was at least able to manage the lengthy walk, I can't imagine what it must be like for someone who has more severe physical challenges to get out of there. It doesn't seem like a good enough system.
Thank you for catering to the much underserved demographic of people who are both regular Radio 4 listeners and geeky YT content consumers. I'd like to think I'm one of about a dozen people who knew what you were leading up to as soon as the trombones were audible.
Me me me!!! Only 21 too
I'm 25 and me also!
I'm Sorry I Haven't A Clue what you are on about.
Yup, same here. And I'm not even a Brit...
For my own future reference
1:30 settle for suburbia (*ockfosters)
2:00 Sydney and Paris
3:39 Harry's dream and young Hutchinson
4:28 Jay's rant
5:04 summarized letters
6:05 RIP Harry Beck and his glasses
7:07 Harry Beck superfan
8:18 hashtag
10:13 Mark and advert
If someone else is reading this, just watch carefully and pause to read all text in the video.
#splittheovergroundintodifferentcoloursandnamestomakeiteasiertoreadonthemapandlessconfusingfortouristsandcommutersalikeespeciallywhenitcomestotemporaryclosuresanddelays
*Roosterfosters
Where’s the time stamp for ISIHAC theme? Disappointed.
@@dalriadaskillen sorry. Can you add it?
Why doesn't it show as a hashtag?
@@Anonymous-df8itBig overground. Spread to word on the conspiracy! 🙃
Jay's sponsorship sketches really stand out. Quite frankly they are the only ones that I would not skip for anything in the world.
I was grateful that I had finished eating before the extreme close-up of his pimple, though 😊
you would also quite like Ssethtzeentachs ad breaks
You could say, they are... spot-on
@@Smirnaffskiy Badam-Tusch!
I was about to type just the same. I think the sponsor(s?) should pay him some extra. He doesn't just make an _extra_ effort at making the viewers actually watch them but they, in fact, watch it. At least the two of us.
I remember the family confusion when they unveiled the plaque at Finchley Central.
He either used West Finchley or Highgate depending on whether he was at home or at his parents.
As well as further Underground Maps, he would also 'invent' things, but they were never that great. My grandfather, who was an engineer, would often sit with Harry and explain why they would never work.
*He used either
2:13 this just shows the dedication in these videos. he had to hire an extra and find a bunch of French clothes for them to wear. then they had to learn a whole conversation in French completely fluently just for a 5 second gag. What a guy!
They did not, however, employ said extra to record his own rendition of the ISIHAC theme. That was a bit of a missed opportunity, given what Tim did with the BBC News theme.
@@JdeBP Tim does perform a rendition of a well known tune with a twist in this video. See if you can spot where.
@@JayForeman Again, though, giving Tim a twist instead of a hornpipe is somewhat of a missed opportunity. (-: By the way, they were still sometimes giving the 'phone number as Abbey 1234 at the start of the 1970s.
Is lavaman not aware that Tim speaks fluent French already? Perhaps he doesn't watch Tim's videos.
The actor is such a method actor that he moved to France and spent two years living there just to prepare for the role!
Back in 2007 when I visited London in a work related trip from Kolkata(which that time was the only city in India to have a metro, but it was just a single line Edit: beside Delhi which started in 2002, ), The very first day I laid my eyes on the map, I got so impressed by it, I had never seen anything like that before and yet it took me minutes to figure out, it was so intuitive and I could literally go anywhere in and around London...point to note here is, I was just 22 and hardly travelled alone anywhere in India at that point of my life...and it was my first trip abroad...that map was the biggest reason I got accustomed to London in just few days..I met and interacted and did a lot of things with many, many people there during my month long stay and nobody believed me when I said I was just a visitor.
Slight correction, Delhi metro was operational since 2002. By 2007 it had two big lines which were running near full capacity. Source: I was there using the metro.
in my experience the usability and intuitive design is impressive even when it comes to navigating in the subway, same goes for the airports in london. at least in my experience compared to any other subway system or airport ive used. its hard almost impossible at times, to take the wrong turn.
@@domoncar6782 Kolkata lads seldom care about good stuff outside their own city IMO.
Oh my god another Bengali! Though I didn’t grow up in India, I fondly remembered seeing the trams go by in Kolkata during the summer. It’s a shame they’ve practically gotten rid of them all, seeing as that was a defining symbol of the city :(
Brother. Delhi metro had been operational for half a decade till then. This is also how Bengal got the Roshogola first. Lol
Jago Hazzard! Nice to finally get to see the man whose videos I quite enjoy. And more from Jay and MapMen, please!
Never mind Jago, that looked an awful lot like the Tim Traveller being French.
And at the line massive tube nerds… why no cut to Geoff? It’s kind of conspicuously missing.
Yes! I also immediately recognised his voice! :D
@@JasperJanssen Because he played Frank Pick in Part One.
@@JasperJanssen Because he was already in part 1
i like how you let Half-Asleep Chris have a cameo in this video... nice touch. Hopefully we can see him make an appearance again in future episodes!
Getting excited over a Jago Hazzard cameo in a Jay Foreman video feels like the pinnacle of London transport youtuber nerdery and I'm here for it. Fantastic video as always!
Yes!!!
My jaw genuinely dropped at 6:18, godspeed Jago
I'd personally argue that replacing the map with an app would be a poor decision
I was a tourist in London (among other cities) earlier this year and I found the map to be vital to trying to find my way around and honestly didn't even know that there was an app, and even then with no reception in the deep tube stations it would be considerably more difficult to use the app, especially as a first time visitor
he never suggested it be replaced, rather you use an app to figure out which lines/stations to take rather than look at the map itself
@@ultraL2 Well Brock Bayley is still allowed to argue against replacing the map!
What about a hybrid approach? A digital version of the map where you can hide the details you don't want would allow people to get the info they need at a glance.
@@AndrewMcColl And perhaps places where the map needs to be tiny could have a "simplified" version, which has only your current transport type + what services it will connect to (eg. just a tube map with symbols indicating "main line rail", "tram", "ferry" and so on at stations where the tube connects to those, and for trams a similar map but with only trams and symbols for the tube)
@@mennoltvanalten7260 that's the beauty with a digital version, you can make it work for you. Especially useful if you're only able to use stations with disabled access.
I played and paused the videos for several times from 7:40 to 7:50 to see the maps and caption. I am surprised by maps of different places and as a Hongkonger,I also feel happy about seeing the MTR map of Hong Kong :)
I just came back from Hong Kong for geography dissertation fieldwork! (Not about the MTR haha) but I do love your map system and overall tube network over there, it’s so well done! Really love the city ❤ love from London!
Unfortunately... It's outdated.
So did I.
It’s like another hidden video within a video
NEW YORK
Eurgh.
-Jay Foreman
I almost didn't realise Beck was voiced by Jago Hazzard until he did the "You are the X to my Y" joke.
Brilliant video as always Jay!
Not just voiced. That’s the real him in the video!
@@JayForeman wow, that's awesome. Cheerio!
@@JayForemanI’m SHOOKETH
I've no idea who Jago Hazard is. I suspect I'm in a very small tiny minority on here...
@@paulhaynes8045 I'm with you in that small tiny minority.
“Perfection is achieved not when there is nothing more to add, but when there is nothing left to take away.” The modern tube map designers should pin that above their desks.
The "I'm sorry I haven't a clue" theme tune whilst talking about Mornington Cresent is a very nice touch
That'll be 'The Schickel Shamble', for those wondering. You are most welcome.
The perfect touch would have been getting Tim to cover it. (-:
I do wonder how many of Jay's quintessentially middle-class Brit references are lost on the majority of his audience.
Jago Hazzard. TH-camr. Map designer extraordinaire. His talent knows no bounds
My jaw physically dropped when Harry Beck turned out to be our man JagoHazard 🧡 We love that man
Mark saying this could have been a map men episode was like taking sweets from a child and saying "wouldn't these sweets be nice?"
Pls continue making Map Men too. I love the inconsistent intro of that series
* as well *
He will. He said on his community tab
I can explain the hypnotic bit of melbourne's map for those curious. That is a set of four tunnels linking the five stations inside the city loop together. This prevents trains having to terminate in the city and stop, thus increasing capacity. All the lines running currently diverge from one of those five stations
My favourite thing was that the caption described the map as "like a spider", as when the rail lines were originally being laid out, the planners described it as the "octopus map". The Railway Construction Act of 1884 was commonly referred to as the Octopus Act, and that was before they decided to add the City Loop into the system!
@@lachlanmcgowan5712 ha, good shout! My favourite Melbourne rail oddity is how we had an Inner Circle before an underground loop, and it was the most inconvenient, useless and time-consuming Inner Circle ever conceived.
The enthusiasm for Harry Beck is palpable. Loved it!
I get really anxious being on the tube (and in London in general, it’s too busy and crowded for my liking) and I find it really helps to stare at the maps on the tube and count the stops I have left before I get off or follow all the tube lines to pass the time and distract me
It can’t just be me that gets excited when a Jay Foreman notification pops up?
Couldn't agree more
Absolutely not
Oh no, jay foreman bots exist
You’re not alone!
I just did
8:35 triggers my incandescent rage for the inaccurate accessibility information on the Bakerloo line. The map says a few stations have ramp access onto the trains (and the TfL Go app specifically says it's ramp access, for each of the platforms) but they don't, because the cars have a step down into them as they're lower than the platform. As a wheelchair user with very limited cognitive and physical energy, I can tell you I did NOT appreciate wasting an entire hour of the journey finding that out!
I am from New Zealand and while on my Gap Year in London I was entranced by the Tube Map. I would spend my weekends by randomly picking a station on the map then I would book a hotel and explore the area for a couple days. It was amazing. I saw so many random little places that I never would’ve normally seen
I moved to London 3 months ago, and this is exactly what my wife and I do on the weekends to explore London. It's amazing how often we find something really fun/interesting by doing this!
@@caleballen4721 I was born and raised in London and have lived here for a little over 20 years, and I still remember exploring what a random station had in store for us when I went there with friends. It was great fun, and I'd do it again too.
That station was Limehouse on the DLR if you're interested!
@@caleballen4721 I wish I had the money that you people had... I dream of affording a hotel in london each week.
*would have
@@AicyDC I totally feel that. To be fair, I wasn’t in hotels all the time. It was mainly dodgy hostels or questionable airbnbs haha
Yes, this definitely could have been a Map Men episode! #bringmapmenback
Map Men is still going...
Oh wow, I can't believe you managaed to get Mark Cooper-Jones from the web series "Map Men" on a video! Hopefully there's more collaborations with him!
7:43 I would just like to say a final goodbye to line 3, what a wonderful little subway line you were, Toronto will never be the same without you.
On the note of the New York subway, it's designed to be proportioned true to life, as the vast majority of people in the boroughs travel primarily by foot, so knowing distance as it truly is is vital. They've tried a back-style map in the past and it was disliked to put it nicely.
over here in the Europes we have apps where we plunk in where we are or will be and it tells us how far we have to walk to catch a bus or train, but of course up here in Northern Europe walking distance is 3 km, which is 10 times the distance where the typical American demand a car
@@thesteelrodent1796 WDYM, Google Maps does tell that for much of the world's cities, app support is not something where Europe would stand out particularly.
Manhattan is pretty big, so regardless what's your "the distance where typical you demand a subway ride" it can be quite useful to have a map which shows when the distance is twice that. And that was Gabriel's point I think. Not a dick measuring contest about who walks longer.
@@thesteelrodent1796 They didn't have that when the Beck-style map was tried. It was the 1960s.
@@thesteelrodent1796 Americans from NYC are certainly not "typical"...
@@thesteelrodent1796 Europeans thinking they are unique for doing something the entire world does while shitting on Americans for being close minded never gets old
Jug Cerovic's map idea is absolute beauty; traditional, contemporary, and simplicity, and joyous, all wrapped up in a ball of clear definable lines. And it includes the parks!
Wow another video on London a place I have never visited in a country I have never been too! Really excited to watch it! No joke though I love the effort put in by Jay in the video to make it interesting for all of us.
@@instinctivelycorner Yes, I like Jay's content for real though
Everything you do is so funny that I forget that I'm actually learning something! Who could've guess that a guy from Vancouver, BC, Canada could find videos about the London tube map so entertaining! Well done! All that said, I'm really missing map men. I do hope you guys will be be producing more episodes! Cheers!
Thanks! Map Men is coming back later this year. Stay tuned…..
I love the commentary on all the copy cat maps.
Also, as a Melbournian, our map may be very pretty and hypnotic, but only because everything only connects in the city loop. I’m all for ruining it with upgrades, the next big plan will ruin it even more, but don’t worry it’s not due for completion till 2050 and most of the stops and connections are in the East anyway, so it probably won’t help improve services either. 😂
As a melbournian myself, I agree
It also is trains only, not trams. Stupid different companies.
@@welcomeback2mychannel Yes, and it doesn't even show IKEA stores! Pathetic.
2050 is a bit generous
At least you got a decent map we adelaideians rely too much on cars
I cannot believe the powerhouse of characters in this Map Men, I mean Unfinished London episode! Seeing Half-asleep Chris make a cameo ❤ and Jago’s unexpected face reveal is surprising I love it
I wanted to respond enthusiastically about The Tim Traveller’s cameo, but then I heard Jago’s voice. Reading the comments, it apparently is actually him. What really blows my mind is that we have watched him in part 1, two months ago, not knowing it was him… Nice one. 👍
People were saying that Jay having a literal child for a Surfshark ad was dedication, but he legit wait until he had a spot then recorded himself brushing his teeth with the spot and zoomed in on it so it's super obvious, for an ad.
The first few seconds of this ad is a perfect recreation of exactly where I was and what I was doing when I came up with the idea for this ad.
@@JayForeman Nice!
Jago Hazard as Harry is a class casting.
Came for the tube map history, stayed for the VPN ad! Excellent work on all fronts, as always!
The Mexico City metro map is a beauty and possibly exceptional! It has individual icons that relate to the name of the station making it navigable without having to read.
Lots of illiterate locals must be glad, I guess
6:18 I am SO GLAD you included that Jago Hazzard reference!!
Not just a Jago Hazzard reference, Jago Hazzard himself in the flesh!
@@JayForeman Oh wow, thought it was dubbed! Brilliant!
Indeed, as a foreigner, I use the map to plan my journeys around London and it really encourages me to hop on a train and start exploring! (but it's also confusing, mainly because of additional non-tube services added)
Lovely video! I'm glad Harry Beck eventually got the deserved recognition!
it still is crazy awesome to me the amount of people you collab with for these, and how many i seem to recognize when they appear
I tend not to recognise most of them, but it's still awesome.
@Real Aiglon For me, someone who has no idea who any of these people are, what's amazing about it is simply the wide cast of characters that makes these videos so lively and fun!
That has be to be the best sponsored content ever. absolutely epic. Also the last alternative map you showed was excellent, someone put a lot of work into that
Jay and Ryan George have some of the best sponsored segments.
Jug Cerovic is a living legend in the transit map-making world! Look him up!
@@Nooticus Thanks! I love stuff like that. He really understands the principals of Harry Becks original concept. Why have TfL made such a mess of the Elizabeth line at Moorgate/Liverpool st., for example? Cerovic has totally understood the idea to keep it as uncomplicated as possible
The overground lines in a different shade too! genius. I hate the way that just about every time you sit on an overground train, the map opposite you is of a different line to the one you are using, so is totally irrelevant and darn right confusing to any tourists.
You should watch Internet Historian's Nord ad spots
I just realized that all those amazing online maps you showed could be used now, it's representing the same thing so if it's easier to read for certain people they can still use it. I love maps!!
I’d love a whole video on how bad the tube is for accessibility. I often feel the need to visit London for my work, but given that it’s basically impossible to get around on the tube to the archives I need to go to I just don’t, and my work suffers.
It's also relevant to anyone with elderly parents or kids in a buggy. When I had a kid and my parents came to visit, it wildly changed where we went and how we got there, swapping eg "one train" with "a train to somewhere else, followed by a bus"
They'd do better to have a separate Accessibility map, without the inaccessible stations, rather than overusing the wheelchair symbol.
@@crash.override That's not a bad idea
@@crash.override Or just have a symbol to show which stations are not accessible, rather than having symbols on all of the ones that are. A symbol which alerts you to which ones are not accessible is much more useful than cluttering the map by throwing an accessible symbol on all of them.
@@crash.override they do. It’s big, clunky, cumbersome and as usual makes those of us with access needs feel “other”.
I can't believe Jay made an interesting documentary, and ALSO won Mornington Crescent: TH-camrs Edition in the same video!
The Elizabeth Line has really shaken up the Unsure Junction Loop midgame hasn't it?
@@SleepyHarryZzz No-one seems to have worked out the implications for alternate Wednesdays when there is an R in the month, especially if an opponent is in nid.
@@drtrustrum Those rules are rendered moot if a player goes through Euston though, it's the traditional train turnaround gambit introduced in 1998.
@@SleepyHarryZzz I've noticed a lot more games being won by Judge's Decision since it opened, but maybe that'll settle down once players adjust.
@@MunchMan But wasn't that deemed illegal retrospectively, as under the 1963 Boseman interpretation that originally ruled on backwards doubles? In any case it is surely not in the spirit of the game. See the Dee era ruling on Cockfosters.
7:05 Oh! All the cameos! I love this!
Thanks Jago, you are the pleasant surprise to my unexpected cameo.
I have an image of all these legends having an amazing premiere party with this on in a London flat somewhere and so they should. Tim was spit-take funny and the Jago face-reveal was just incredible. What a triumph!
I love your display name
Yup, my mate's grandad bought two flats literally right next to the Tooting Bec tube station (about 300 metres away). Bought them both for £3000, yes £1500 each! Which was still considered a shitload of money in 1971). These flats are BIG too! His mum lived downstairs and he and his family lived in the flat upstairs.
My mate's mum inherited them around 2000 and she sold the pair for... £1.5 million! It's now a building of five smaller flats.
I was half expecting Jay to father another child just for the SurfShark VPN advert at the end 😂
Seriously though, excellent work as always! 😀👍
London should either adopt what we do in Sydney, and have a separate map for all Light Rail/Tram services, as well as have the Overground lines in different colours (like you mentioned), making the London Tube map solely a map for Trains whilst having a London Tram map in the same style for all non-train services (i.e. DLR and Tram).
However, the much better option would be to appoint one of the designers that you showed to design the tube map to make it both useful and beautiful (as you put it). As all of London's Rail Networks are all interconnected and complement each other making a commute via. Public Transport in London so much easier compared to other cities around the world, the whole system (including the map itself) would suffer without any one of those rail networks in use (or displayed on the tube map).
Great video as always Jay.
It’s like a Who’s Who of British TH-camrs! Great to see Tim and Jago. I can’t wait for the next one where Tom Scott is the Duke of Edinburgh and Drachinifel is a captain of the Woolwich Ferry. Maybe even James Hoffman could be the hot beverage person at 55 Broadway! Excited!
On a trip to New York some years ago I found the Subway map such a confusing mish-mash that I sat up all night trying to design a London-style diagrammatic version. Then I visited the New York Transit Museum and discovered that this had already been done - and rejected on the grounds that it made everything look far too complicated.
But yes, the London map is going down the far-too-complicated route itself these days. It now has nine (count 'em, NINE) zones - or ten, if you include the weird Zone 2/3, a distinctly separate thing from Zone 2 or Zone 3, which exists for no apparent reason. It looks like the Zoning Committee had a massive argument between the Zone Two-ers and the Zone Three-ites, which they could only resolve by fudging up a kind of neutral territory which counts as both zones and neither.
They wanted the new developments in east London (particularly Stratford) to be in the same zone as Canary Wharf, basically. (Without knocking it out of the east end of the DLR. I used to live in Custom House (zone 3) and would walk to Canning Town (zone 2/3) because it was cheaper to go to central London from there.)
That reminds me a lot of what happened in Prague recently. See, they simplified it! Everywhere you go in Prague it's just Prague! Simple! Easy! Well, except for when you're not from Prague and come to Prague with the expanded Prague integrated system from outside of Prague, in which case the same stop can be two or maybe even three different zones (I'm not even sure now) depending on which mode of public transport you're using. How many zones exactly are you using up if you switch between modes of transport? No idea. I think even the conductors on the trains aren't sure.
Most people's response to me telling them I live in Zone 8 is "there's a zone 8 now?". By most measures I am not even *in* London.
You're gonna love the new one! They did their best to find a compromise between geography and the barebones line, I think it worked out pretty decent
@@beth12svist i remember having 180 stations and no zones in my city. But than some outside-going railways got integrated with the metro and there are zoned. And there 241 stations now (without these additional railways).
It got confusing for me now.
On other hand - i don't think i will live here for long now.
As someone who used to get the tube as a local and now just uses it as a tourist, I think it still very much has a place. It might be because I already have a decent understanding of it, but I much prefer looking through the tube map to see where to go than using any app. Once you have wrapped your head around it and learned some of the basic lines, it can sometimes be faster than unlocking your phone, finding the app, and typing in the station names. Not to mention, if you're already in the tube, you have no access to internet in order to use those apps, so you need to use a normal tube map. It's better to just acclimate yourself to it than to rely on an app and then flounder when you don't have it.
For tourists, it allows you to customize. For a trip to London, there's so much crammed in the one city that it is better to be creative with things rather than strictly going from A to B, then later backtracking to go to C, then going back past B to get to D, etc. I do think they should separate some aspects of it. Is anyone actually getting River Bus services to get from point A to B in London? No, so why is it on a map for transportation? Sure, it might be a lovely thing to do, but so are most of the sights in London. Why isn't the British Museum marked on there? Or the V&A? Or the London Eye? Or Elizabeth Tower and Houses of Parliament?
Equally, the Overground is a big enough line at this point to have its own separate map. On the Overground map (which would inherently be less cluttered than the general Tube map), you could have special markings to denote that the station is shared with the Underground, but otherwise, it's not very necessary. They just don't want to do that because then the Overground would make less money.
@cindybin2001 hey at least you’re honest about only wanting to be around white people
Ugh I know, the DLR, Overground, and Trams should get their own maps with their own line colours. They have a National Rail connection symbol, so why not similar for those?
You say why not have various museums marked, but I’d go far as to say why not have the bus routes if they want to be consistent!
I will admit the first time I used the DLR I only knew about it because of the unified map, but honestly there’s still a place for the very large unified maps, it’s just no good for the pocket one. As evidenced by how the map which ALSO incorporates the national rail services is only available in some stations. Why are the other TfL modes not part of the other in that schema for the Tube map? And if they want a completionist map, then it’s insufficient.
As you say though, it’s all about advertising TfL services and not advertising the others’. I hate when business reasons win against public utility reasons…
Well done Jay. Your wish of splitting the overground into different colours and such has come true.
And thanks to this, the former Watford DC line out of Euston now looks like it's part of the bloody central line
No it doesn’t. They made it yellow.
Another really interesting video, thank you!
Hearing Jago Hazzard *really* caught me off-guard
Not gonna lie, that proud lil smirk to the side at 4:15 got me
So adorable
the fact that I just realised Jago was playing Harry Beck and this is basically his face reveal feels like some incredible plot twist.
As a (long term) tourist in a foreign city, the tube map is one of the very few navigation tools that works reliably and hasn't failed me in my three months stay.
Not having a tube map and expecting people to use apps, would be the same as using google maps, but removing all the streets that aren't on your route. It would be just madness, especially if you don't have a destination yet or are planning a day trip.
Long story short: public transit maps are essential.
Thank you Jay for this amazing episode!
*I knew I should have prayed to the Map Gods!*
@Jау Fоrеman 🅥 Hello Mr Fake Foreman!
@@hinesecitizen Hello fake Nelson.
@chad007. I'm not a bot. Try directing it towards fake jay.
@@pooletrainboy Hello Mr Fake Figs. Your pfp is a plane!
Jay is my favorite type of bird to watch in the morning, or night, or any time of the day...
Holy shit, I was happy enough with an Australian city being mentioned but a cameo from Dan Illic playing Dame Edna as the boss of Sydney subway was top shelf
Thought I recognised Dan Illic there!
7:46 want to mention that the Hong Kong map is the older version. The new version have brown and purple connected, and as a Hong Konger I hate the two lines swapping
"rotated 45 degrees in his grave" made my day!
hahaha that cracked me up.
His grave marked with my day of birth as his day of death made me a little sad.
Actually apropos of collaborations, I think we need a mega video featuring Tim Traveller, Jay Foreman, Jago Hazzard, Tom Scott, Geoff Marshall, Paul & Rebecca Whitewick, and Pete and his Bus. Someone please "make it so!"
I never use a planner to get around on the Tube; I always look at the map and manually plot out my journey. Sure, a planner would find the most efficient route and do it quicker, but there's no comparison to the joy of tracing out a route by eye. It makes the journey more satisfying too.
Agreed! Plus, it gives you orientation in the city. :)
I just think it's neat.
9:36 My wife and I visited London and the UK for the first time a few years ago and not having to use international data/mobile service (we're Unitedstatesians) and being able to have a physical map to navigate the Tube was a godsend.
im sorry but "unitedstatesians" LMFAOOOO 💀💀💀💀🤚
I travelled to London with my late wife in 2019 and using the Tube map was one of our favorite things.
Having travelled there before, I'd told her how much easier it was to get around and know just where the hell you were. I may as well mention she was from New York.
She was so surprised and delighted by it and we had almost as fun getting *around* London as we did doing things *in* London.
Haha! I went through all of part one, and half of part two before understanding the "Harry Beck" was Jago Hazzard! Your cameos are the best! Thanks for the excellent videos as ever!
I was baffled by the lack of a credit for Harry Beck in the initial episode. 6:17 was an excellent surprise. What a great collaboration.
I loved the historical accuracy of Harry Beck not being named in the end credits.
2:15 “absolutely not, it's not possible, the very idea of a dirty Englishman drawing the plan for the new Parisian Metro but that doesn't make sense, right?” Lmao attention to detail is top notch
“Ça va pas la tête, non?” is more like “Is he out of his mind?”
I was in London a couple of weeks around the turn of the century and the tube map worked quite well for me, I never got lost on the tube, but the few times I used a bus I ended up in random locations and had to find a tube to get where I wanted. I ended up only using the buses when I wanted to sit up top and just see things with no plan.
Agree. Jago Hazzard's cameo was a real treat!
he no longer can hide behind a voice over. 🤣
All this time we were looking Jago playing Harry Beck and we never knew what he really looked like.
It's great to see all the transport and map enthusiasts together.
totally agree that a lot of clutter can and should be removed, but not the accessibility info. that is vital, and disabled commuters should be able to see it quickly and easily. their commute is already complicated enough i imagine, judging by how little stations are actually fully step-free from train to street.
ofc the true solution is to make everything accessible so the info is redundant, as someone else in this comment section has already suggested. but until then it should always remain on the map
The disability info bit was clearly a joke, given that he ended it with "... to be quite so blobby".