A Tube Map for London Cyclists

One of the difficulties of cycling in London is finding your way around. Cycle paths are often poorly marked, and wiggle around the mazes of the city’s back streets instead of striking out boldly from A to B. So when you’re planning a cycle trip, it’s not always easy to work out exactly how to get to your destination.

Now it’s been suggested that what London cyclists really need is a tube map – a map of cycle routes that’s as clear and well designed as Harry Beck’s much admired underground map. Simon Parker has designed a super cycling map that uses the same stylisation, the same rich colours, and the same simplification as the tube map to show London’s cycle routes.

The other key to his map is that he sees London’s cycle routes as a set of ‘tube lines’ criss-crossing the city, rather than a dense network of little bits and pieces and local routes. So you could say to yourself, if you’re going from Stoke Newington to Westminster, “I need to take N4a and then R1 – blue, then red”, just the way you know that to get from Bethnal Green to Mornington Crescent you can take Central then Northern – red then black. That should make life a lot simpler.

Parker has already got several local authorities to back his plans; but unfortunately Transport for London doesn’t see eye to eye with him, and that has so far stymied the development of the idea.

One of the big difficulties right now is the fact that there are so many different types of cycle routes. There’s the London Cycle Network. There are local routes, developed by the borough councils. There are the mayor’s new Cycle Superhighways, and routes developed by Sustrans, and Greenways routes – and all of them have different signage and different maps. Someone really needs to bring all these routes together, and that’s where a single route map for London cyclists comes in.

The shocking thing is that developing the ‘tube map’ idea would only cost £1.6m for the whole of London, according to London Cycle Network, against £250m for ‘Boris Bikes’ and cycle Superhighways. It might not even cost that – volunteers would be quite happy to go and decorate a few lamp posts with the right colour paint, one way that cycle route signage could be created quickly and cheaply!

If you want to see a London Cycling ‘tube map’, go and sign the online petition – and you can download the current map from Cycle Lifestyle, too.

Photo by Matthew Black on flickr