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The London Underground turns 150. See how the tube map has changed
- KwanEsq 14y agoHuh, bit of a gap between 1974 and 2002, you don't get to see the Jubilee line prior to its extension south of the river.
- adaml_623 14y agoBit of a gap between 2002 and 2013. That's just lazy. It couldn't be too hard to find more maps.
- untog 14y agoIn case any New Yorkers are interested, historical maps (minus any textual guide to them) is available here: http://www.nycsubway.org/wiki/Historical_Maps http://www.nycsubway.org/wiki/Historical_Maps Sometimes I wonder what the NYC subway system would look like if it was centrally administered from the start, like the Tube was. NYC definitely has made some choices that look strange today.
- jessriedel 14y ago> Sometimes I wonder what the NYC subway system would look like if it was centrally administered from the start, like the Tube was. NYC definitely has made some choices that look strange today. I'm new in NYC. Could you elaborate on this?
- koenigdavidmj 14y agoThe subway was three (?) different companies until the seventies or somewhere in that vicinity.
- seanmcdirmid 14y agoLike commuter overland routes still are in Japan today I think.
- koenigdavidmj 14y agoOr even the Tokyo Subway, which is two systems (Tokyo Metro and Toei).
- T-hawk 14y agoOnly until 1940. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_New_York_City_Subway#Unification_and_contraction http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_New_York_City_Su...
- untog 14y agoThe subway system used to be operated by different companies. To simplify greatly- the letter lines were a different company (BMT) to the number lines (IRT). That's why there are so few stations that allow you to transfer between letters and numbers, and why trains on lettered lines cannot run on numbered tracks, and vice versa. It's also why we have countdown clocks on numbered lines and not lettered ones- they use different technology. There are even stories of one company intentionally obstructing the other. If I recall correctly, the BMT built track that they had no intention of using, just so that they could block the IRT from extending the 7 line beyond Times Square. Sometimes I wonder why the subways fascinate me as much as they do.
- jessriedel 14y ago> It's also why we have countdown clocks on numbered lines and not lettered ones- they use different technology. This actually came up in a different thread, where I asked how the old technology could possibly prevent something as simple as countdown clocks. I never got a good answer when I said > I don't care about the signal towers or how old the system is. The point is that the technology for identifying the location and speed of a few hundred giant hunks of metal moving around on fixed tracks is trivial and does not need to interact with the old system (or humans) at all. Just tag each train with a few RFID's, and stick in a few hundred miles of wiring into the tunnels. >I mean, are you telling me for a 100 million dollars this couldn't be done? http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4979988 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4979988 The context was this: > “The existence of this sleek digital interface barely hints at the investment that had to be made in terms of hardware and infrastructure to make this enormous public benefit a reality,” said Thomas F. Prendergast, President of MTA New York City Transit. “Think of Subway Time as the small tip of a huge iceberg. For a product of this quality to be available on the lettered lines, we will need to commit hundreds of millions of dollars and years of dedicated effort.” > Automatic Train Supervision installation began in 1997. The system was activated in segments, with the substantial completion taking place in 2008. The project cost $20.8 million per year over 11 years, or $228.3 million in total. http://www.mta.info/news/stories/?story=921 http://www.mta.info/news/stories/?story=921 I find this baffling. Can anyone shed some light?
- ed_blackburn 14y agoThe Tube wan't centrally administrated. It was formed by the nationalisation of desperate private companies [1]. This process continues even to this day with current right-wing, free market ideologist Boris Johnson allowing London Overground Lines to join the network [2] [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/London_Underground#Nationalisation http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/London_Underground#Nationalisat... [2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/London_Overground http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/London_Overground
- willyt 14y agoBoris Johnson is an opportunist, he'll believe in anything you want if there's a vote in it. He spunked couple hundred million on replacing bendy buses ahead of the renewal cycle because it made good headlines.
- archangel_one 14y agoPretty much nobody but Ken Livingstone liked the bendy buses. Boris has a lot of faults, but criticising him for listening to his constituents seems a bit rough.
- willyt 14y agoYes but the fiscally prudent thing to do would have been to wait 4-5 years for them to need replacement then replace them with something else. They were just unpopular and prone to fare dodging not dangerous. There were a few reports of cyclists being killed, but for that money. You could have saved more lives by, say, installing platform edge doors in busy tube stations. Edit: And I dont think it was ever conclusivly shown that they actually killed more cyclists per mile than normal buses.
- KwanEsq 14y agoI'm afraid you are mistaken about the underground always being centrally managed. It was built by a variety of private companies in the beginning, and they did not come under one umbrella until 1933.
- makepanic 14y agomade a small js to display all the gif/jpgs inline on that page. https://gist.github.com/4494373 https://gist.github.com/4494373
- vidarh 14y agoLondon Underground is notorious for the sometimes ridiculous interchanges because it's an amalgamation of private lines that was built with little to no thought about locating stations for different lines close to each other..
- nmcfarl 14y agoThe light grey zone coloration (In the last 2 maps) is hugely distracting in these images, though I don’t remember that being the case in real life. Perhaps it’s an artifact of the size.
- rayiner 14y agoI'm always amazed at how modern the world was in 1890-1910. I recently learned that the train line I take to work every morning (Metro North's New Haven line) was electrified in 1907! At Disneyland, Tomorrowland has an exhibit the Carousel of Progress. While it's ostensibly about the advances in home technology over the last 100 years, what really strikes you is how quickly it becomes recognizably modern. Electric lighting and cooking became common in the 1920's, and by 1940 you've got a dishwasher, television, etc.
- EliRivers 14y agoIt isn't that 1890 was modern; 2010 is lacking in advancement.
- balloot 14y agoPlease. The internet and cell phones have changed the world as much as any technology since the light bulb.
- EliRivers 14y agoYour world. Which is much smaller than THE world. That said, here are some things invented after the lightbulb that have had more effect than cell phones and the internet. Aeroplanes. Transistors. Integrated circuits.
- jfb 14y agoAnd dwarfing them all, the sulfa drugs.
- rayiner 14y agoI'm not sure that this is true. The light bulb changed the fabric of society down to the hours people kept. The internet has mostly made it more convenient to do things you already did. Instead of calling your brother on his birthday, you leave him a facebook message. Instead of sending a fax or telex, you send an e-mail. But people largely still work the same way in the same patterns.
- rplnt 14y agoThat webpage is a nightmare to use. I love almost any kind of maps though, so it was worth it.
- tech-no-logical 14y ago+1. this is the worst user experience I've had in a long time.
- lucian1900 14y agoI just see a spinner. I give up.
- unabridged 14y agoI have 4 scroll bars on the right side of the page, and i need to use the second one to scroll through the blog post. A normal stationary blog that could be implemented in one tiny html file with 10 images. And even when I allow all scripts (which load from 10+ domains) and cookies, and use the site as they intended it still is a nightmare. While scrolling to view the entire post I am attacked by some weird top menu bar that grows and somehow more stories are added to the same page making the post I'm reading even tougher to get to.
- xyzzy123 14y agoMornington crescent!
- dohertyjf 14y agoI think this is one of the most interesting parts of the old subway - http://www.urban75.org/london/leinster.html http://www.urban75.org/london/leinster.html There are fake houses in London, with very real looking facades, that were built so that the steam from the engines could escape. Epic.
- patrickg 14y agoNot related, but also interesting. The railway U1 in Berlin going right through a house. Amazing when you are in front of the house's door. http://www.bahnbilder.de/1024/-hausdurchfahrt-im-uebergangsbereich-542267.jpg http://www.bahnbilder.de/1024/-hausdurchfahrt-im-uebergangsb...