What would the London Underground network look like if it had the regular grid-like structure of the Beijing Subway?
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| Beijing-style Tube Map (full size) |
The methodology behind the map was relatively straightforward:
- Find a geographically accurate map of the Beijing Subway
- Stick that map on top of a map of London, aligning Tiananmen Square with Trafalgar Square
- Assign names to all the stations based on their new positions in London
- Map out the network in the London Underground style
The image below shows how this works, comparing the central sections of the real Beijing Subway and the "Beijing-style Tube":
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| Map on left is by Ran and Hat600 at Wikimedia Commons, licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0 |
A closer look
Repositioning the Beijing Subway in London gives rise to a couple of neat coincidences. Many of Beijing's railway stations get moved to odd places in London, but the largest railway station ends up in Battersea, at the site of the real-life Clapham Junction station:
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| Battersea Railway Station |
Line 28 of the Beijing Subway will run through Beijing's central business district. The corresponding line on the Beijing-style Tube happes to provide a direct link between two of London's business centres, the City and Canary Wharf:
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| Central Business District line |
In other places, moving the Beijing Subway to London leads to oddities.
Perhaps most noticeable is the relative lack of stations in central London. This is due partly to Beijing's relatively even spacing of subway stops (about a kilometre apart), and partly to the presence of the historical Forbidden City and Beihai Park in the centre of Beijing.
The London Underground avoids crossing parks like Hyde Park and Regent's Park. The Beijing-style Tube, on the other hand, happily marches across these green spaces. Richmond Park gets several stations of its own:
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| Stations in and around Richmond Park |
The location of Beijing's Daxing International Airport (due to open in 2019) lines up pretty well with Gatwick Airport. However, Beijing Capital International Airport ends up in Debden:
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| Debden International Airport |
The outskirts of the network serve some places which aren't built up at all. This sometimes made the naming process tricky. "Darent Fields" isn't the name of anything, it's just a bunch of fields near the mouth of the River Darent:
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| Darent Fields |
Some people might wonder why Crayford is mapped to the right of Dartford in spite of Dartford being further east. The corresponding portion of the Beijing Subway makes a U-turn and runs back west before terminating; this U-turn isn't shown on the map for the sake of simplicity. This is similar to what happens on the real Tube map: Beckton DLR station is actually west of Cyprus and Gallions Reach, but is mapped on the right.
Line 22 of the Beijing Subway will be a high-speed commuter railway linking Beijing to the Pinggu District to the northeast. The London equivalent ends up serving a handful of small villages in Essex:
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| I bet none of these folks expected to end up on any Tube maps |
What's the point, though?
It goes without saying that the structure of the Beijing Subway is not a perfect fit for London, especially when the relative positions of stations is replicated exactly.
But the map gives a small hint at how the London Underground could have looked if it had been centrally planned from the start and following a very specific set of principles (where lines run parallel, rarely branch and don't share track). The map also helps to translate the shape and scale of the Beijing Subway into terms which Londoners like me are likely to find more familiar.
But the map gives a small hint at how the London Underground could have looked if it had been centrally planned from the start and following a very specific set of principles (where lines run parallel, rarely branch and don't share track). The map also helps to translate the shape and scale of the Beijing Subway into terms which Londoners like me are likely to find more familiar.