This is a simple mapping tool I developed that places circles round the locations of tube stations on Google Maps. It can give you an approximation of walking distance to each station and an overall view of how London is covered by the underground network.
I’ve been meaning to finish this for ages. The previous version of Google Maps API was slow at drawing shapes to layers and I lost interest soon after starting development. However the v3 API has improved the speed of things considerably, especially in shape drawing, and has made it a worthwhile project again. Some older computers/browsers may still take a while to update when you change zones/lines, but in general it takes no more than a second or two.
I’ve always been interested in maps and the way in which they can be combined with other data to provide a different view on a city, Charles Booth’s Poverty Map of London is a long favourite of mine, as is the iconic tube map. A while ago I found a CSV of all the underground station locations and the idea of creating something with the data intrigued me. At the time I was trying to move house and wanted somewhere within easy walking of a tube station, so the idea of a proximity map arose.
Looking at the map there are some interesting things to note: The north-west is served particularly well by the tube network. This area was commonly known as Metroland in the earlier part of the 20th century and was given good links to city for commuters. In contrast south London has very few stations, sometimes attributed to the geology of the ground in the area, but most likely the result of it already having a good overground network by the time the tube was gaining popularity. It’s also worth noting that the Overground is not portrayed in the map as it was not in the CSV data.