This Map Shows When And Where Passengers Get Off The Tube

Harry Rosehill
By Harry Rosehill Last edited 74 months ago
This Map Shows When And Where Passengers Get Off The Tube
Credit: Gwilym

"That's one jaunty looking tube map." So might say your average Londoner who comes across this map. Though look closer and you'll see something truly genius going on.

The map is plotted with straight lines between tube stations, hence its angularity. There's more going on than just that; the lines grow and shrink on size dependent on how busy said stop is. So the busiest stop on the line, Waterloo, is also the largest. It averaged 330,679 daily entries and exits in 2016.

Have a go at scrolling around to see how busy your tube stop is compared to its neighbours. Obviously the map is at its fattest in the centre and becomes more spindly as it spreads out, but this isn't a steadfast rule: see Stratford as proof.

That's just one side of the data. There's another fun tool to play about with as well, where you can see what the rate of entry is at different times of day.

Rate of entries and exits at Old Street

The image above shows the local station for Londonist Towers, Old Street. The cool visualisation of data plots number of entries against number of exits. We can confirm that morning rush is bad, and that little hill at the end underplays the severity of the evening rush hour squeeze, when we sometimes have to queue just to get into the station.

Play around with the map yourself here.

Last Updated 18 January 2018