please empty your brain below

I think you misspelled 'dangleway' in the first paragraph.
I wonder if the tube map could be described as a map of services TfL run or would like to run. Sadiq has had his eyes on some sort of Thameslink devolution for a while, hasn't he?
Not only that, but not all Thameslink trains call at Kentish Town or stations north of West Hampstead, so expect newbies to end up at St. Albans, on the other branch, first call north of Finsbury Park will be Potters Bar, so a very misleading map.

I assume the interchange symbols at New Barnet and New Southgate are for the GN suburban services - but how is a normy supposed to know that?
In my mind the simplest thing to do would be to strip the zones off the map, make it larger in size and include all NR lines within the zone limits. Maybe with some differentiation between low and high frequency, instead of by operator. That would essentially merge the London Rail & Tube map with the main Tube map.
Well, I suppose they implemented the agreed requirements and met their "Q4 objectives" before the HR system shut down. They did what they were asked to do. But, to me, the end result feels unsatisfying and neither fish nor fowl. And that's without delving into the anomalies. Ah well, next time maybe just make single blobs for KXSPI, FarrBar, LiverMoor and the like, and add footnotes that Tramlink and DLR are (I think) entirely step free to remove lots of blobs. Oh, and use an app for actual journey planning as this is impenetrable...
I prefer the tube and rail map which shows all London train services. Why have a map with lots of lines missing.
Given that it has been mayoral ambition of all the three mayors so far, and all previous and future Green and Liberal Democrat candidates, to control all rail services operating within the whole of Greater London/those terminating just outside, surely when control of these lines gets handed over to TFL-as will surely happen one day-they will appear on the tube map?

dg writes: Never risk two surelys.
Just scrap it - the London Rail and Tube Map has everything and can be downloaded as a pdf onto a smartphone - it's the only map I now look at.
'I don't use it so I don't see why anyone needs it' is the worst of arguments.
The tube map is too complicated. I use the paper London and the South East RAIL SERVICES map,published by National Rail. They don't have to squash all the information into a small space.
It's a bloody mess. Crossrail is the perfect opportunity to burn it all down and start afresh.
At tfl the designers don’t talk to the transport planners/experts hence why you often get mistakes/anomalies on the map. The design team will now be reverse justifying some of these anomalies...
John above is right: we have moved steadily from a map that showed a specific set of services to an almost random selection of Greater London rail services. It has to be time to start again.
I dont seee the need for bendy bit around KXSP - it could have been straight with the blob between the Victoria and Northern.
The interchange blob at Putney Bridge is actually very new. It wasn't there on my 2018 map and a quick internet search reveals it wasn't there when the majority of Edgware Road services terminated there.

I think it must be something to do with promoting the rather lengthy interchange with the riverbus at Putney Pier the other side of the river.

dg writes: Removed from post, thanks.

Given that is considered a connection I'm suprised East Putney doesn't get a National Rail sign, as that's an accepted free Oyster connection with SWR at Putney station.
Discussions are under way for Overground to take over the Moorgate to Stevenage (and possibly Welwyn Garden City) services, so the "Northern City" would reappear on the tube map.
The December 2020 National Rail timetable change has not been postponed; it has still happened, but perhaps not with as many changes as was envisaged.

The production of the December 2020 National Rail timetable as a book (well, a collection of PDFs) valid until May 2021 has been postponed, because of the frequent changes to timetables due to Coronavirus.
I get the fact that the London tube map is iconic.

But now is the time you would hope that someone in TfL says lets make something fit for purpose. Sadly I don't see that being the case, which is a shame as there are some good ideas out there amongst cartography enthusiasts.
Somewhere, in a office, far, far away, but possibly Palestra, must be someone who has established a criteria for inclusion and symbols. That criteria may show that using the National Rail symbol means connections with 'other' National Rail services are possible. But if you're a local then you probably know this already, and if you're not a local then will the key really help? Renaming to 'King's Cross & St Pancras International' does at long last mean we have the correct names for both mainline stations.
The 'lone interchange blob' should have been more endangered, with Amersham superseded by a wheelchair blob.

Even if we ignore that the new bridge opened without ceremony or press release last week and pretend it is still forthcoming, the project was delayed by lockdown and the Tube Map has preempted step-free provision that wasn't quite finished at time of official release of the map before.
With the continuing destruction of the usability of the tube map, which has been ongoing for well over a decade, combined first with the abolition of any geographical or comprehensive bus map, and now followed by the abolition of many of the spider maps (was looking for some for the centre of Muswell Hill and East Finchley for someone yesterday - forget it, they are ex-spider maps), it's clearly time for a restart.

A new Frank Pick. A big clearout of the idiots in TfL who have done so much damage to the basic function of communicating information. On the tube map: less is more. On the other, now abolished maps, well a bit more would actually be more.
It will always be controversial. With some regarding the current map as a defaced work of art and others as a travel guide there will never be agreement.

Personally, I think that nowadays, with the complexity involved, the two are absolutely unreconcilable.
The Thameslink Core should ALWAYS be on the map as it's a major cross London service that visitors should be encouraged to use (I'd count this as West Hampstead/Finsbury Park to Elephant/London Bridge)

But not the whole Thameslink which just clutters up the map and creates confusion, e.g. a visitor going to Greenwich may end up hanging around London Bridge waiting for the Thameslink service instead of catching a Southeastern one.

I suppose the logic of Charlton getting the NR symbol is that you can change there for the services to Blackheath and Lewisham PLUS the next station Woolwich Dockyard is missing from the map as Thameslink trains for some reason don't stop there.
People really care about this stuff, don't they? I find it astonishing, especially in 2020.
I *think* that the underlying principle behind the use of National Rail symbols is meant to be they get placed at the last location you can change from the services that are shown on the map onto National Rail services that aren't shown to reach other destinations. But there are lots of errors that undermine this!

Therefore, Charlton gets one because you can chnage there for Southeastern services to Blackheath, Lewisham or Woolwich Dockyard. Abbey Wood gets one because you can change there for trains to Belvedere and Erith, which Thameslink skips. But for this to be consistent, Greenwich should have lost its National Rail symbol, as there's no reason to change between Thameslink and Southeastern there.

Similarly, Shortlands gets one rather than Bromley South, as its the last place you can change from Thameslink to head via Beckenham Junction. But that doesn't really explain Bickley getting one.

Purley gets one because its the last place to change for the Tattenham Corner/Caterham branches, whereas there'd be no reason to interchange at Coulson South.

That's my attempt to make some sense of it, anyway...
The inclusion of Swanley and Dartford reflects that they are the only Kentish stations where Oyster may be used.

Curiously though the description of "towards Gravesend" is not a destination that Thameslink trains ever terminate at - they almost all run through to Rainham in the Medway Towns (variously described as Rainham Kent or Rainham Medway).
Bexley finally gets on the Tube map. How long before all London Boroughs get a look-in? (Crossrail 2?)
So if I want to travel from Waterloo to Wimbledon I should get the Bakerloo line to Elephant & Castle and then the Thameslink? Is that quicker than the train?
The press release goes overboard in stressing that this is a temporary addition. Perhaps that will make it easy to change it later (like Mikey C I think it makes a lot of sense to have the thameslink core on the map, and very little sense to have the outer branches there.)
If New Southgate/Oakleigh Park/New Barnet are on, then why isn't Hadley Wood (Z6)? Seems a bizarre call.

Doubly so when currently all four stations (as pointed out in your post) have lost their TL service during the current pandemic - they previously were served by a WGC-KGX TL service, which was the peak time precursor to the through service to Sevenoaks.
When you say in para 5, If Farringdon's blobs were all the same colour, do you mean KX-StP's blobs?

dg writes: No.
Cross-referencing with the full rail/tube map on the TFL site (no idea if this actually reflects real life services given that you've said Thameslink doesn't call at New Barnet etc. at the moment) the New Barnet and New Southgate blobs can be 'justified' as so:

You can change at New Barnet to get a Great Northern northbound service which calls at Hadley Wood, Brookmans Park and Welham Green. Supposedly Thameslink does not call at these stations.

And at New Southgate you can change for a southbound Great Northern service which calls at Ally Pally, Hornsey and Harringay.

As Political Animal pointed out they highlight the last station where you can make a change which is why Oakleigh Park isn't given an interchange blob.
A National Rail symbol ought to suffice at New Barnet and New Southgate, but the map designers' rationale seems to require a National Rail symbol and an interchange blob.
Well it's nice to see more of South London on the map (Kingston is now the only borough not on it) and I wonder if usage of the Sutton Loop will now increase to the point that nobody feels the need to talk about trams from Sutton to Morden to near Wimbledon.

But just look at the mess around Hackbridge. Is it an island of Zone 4 in a sea of Zone 5 or can one travel to Mitcham Junction on a single zone fare?

I'll stand corrected but I think the tube map included non-LT services even in the 1930s - the Earls Court to Willesden Junction service was on it for a time.
I think that may be a genuine tube map error, Tim.

Hackbridge to Mitcham Junction is all in Zone 4, but the map shows it passing through Zone 5.
I think that the pledge by Thameslink to charge TfL fares is key. Up until now I wasn't aware that this was the case, and so the Thameslink becomes a useful alternative for crossing town without having to make a cost/benefit calculation first.
Thameslink have charged at the lower, TfL, rate through the core (West Hampstead to London Bridge/Elephant) for many years, but unless things have changed very recently, the higher, TOC, rate is charged beyond those points - in common with most fares south of the Thames, and a handful in the north. The same north/south divide also applies to the Ts and Cs on Freedom passes etc.
The TL services that previously served New Southgate/Oakleigh Park/New Barnet in the peaks are currently not running, not only because of C-19 (as already mentioned), but also because of the major engineering work at Kings Cross during the spring. If passengers numbers pick up, hopefully they'll be back, when that finishes.

Within the zones Oyster and Contactless can be used on TL (various complications around the borders). However for many journeys from further out, traditional ticketing can be cheaper, especially at weekends.
The current situation is a mess. The "tube" map has largely become a TFL map (except for buses, where they don't produce a map at all), having previously removed Thameslink.

So I can kind of see the logic in including the Thameslink core, which runs as frequently as an Underground service and provides a very useful purpose I cannot really see the logic in why other routes with a very frequent rail service aren't also on the map. Similarly why the Sutton loop is included on the map whilst given it only runs every 30 minutes.

Either get rid of the Tube map and replace it with the London Tube and Rail map they already publish (I.E. tube, DLR + all National Rail in zones 1-6) and the Dangelway, of course or go back to having it is a tube map and remove all the National Rail services.

Another possibility might be a "high frequency" route map where the map includes all services which normally run (say) every 10 minutes (rail or tube). However that would exclude parts of the tube too (like Chesham, Amersham, Kenny O, Mill Hil East and probably others).
At city thameslink we get a dotted line, but it is not an Out of station interchange (presumably because it is rail).

There is another example of this (Swiss Cottage and South Hampstead) but it is confusing to have dotted lines that are not OSIs (especially if trying work around disruptions)
There are several tube-rail OSIs (list here).

It's potentially misleading that City Thameslink - St Paul's is on the map but isn't an OSI. Passengers changing here would be charged separately for both halves of their journey.
It could be done properly, but that would involve a lot of alterations to the pre-existing elements of the map to make it readable and neat. As it's temporary, it would seem that they have been happy to weave the TL lines hither & thither and put up with oddities such as the falsely distant-looking interchange at Mitcham Junction, just to avoid moving all the other tram blobs to compensate. It will be very easy to delete, once the need is over. On the other hand, they should just employ Jug Cerovic, but I always say that on this sort of occasion
I wish it'd been there for longer. I've often wanted to go from Kings Cross to London Bridge or Blackfriars way and just taken the Northern Line. I simply didn't realise Thameslink was that useful.

Quite a few times I've gone all the way round on the circle to get to Blackfriars from the other side, and it was probably quicker to go to KGX and down on Thameslink.
"People really care about this stuff, don't they? I find it astonishing, especially in 2020." Probably sums up the attitude at TFL.
West Hampstead - three blobs

Particularly weird since TfL's existing (obscure) walking times in Zones 1-3 tube/rail map only uses two blobs !










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