[London] Tube question

[nou]

If you were going northbound on the Northern Line and wanted the most efficient change to the Bakerloo Line, would you do it at Waterloo, Embankment, or Charing Cross?

I asked bob and he wasn't sure. Looking at the Tube map, the only station where the Northern and Bakerloo lines are on the same “blob” is Charing Cross — but am I misremembering that blobness is related to ease of changing?

Comments

[aedh]

I'd do Charing cross as both Waterloo and Embankment are messy in terms of interchanges, but that's more from knowing those stations rather than from principle. I'd never heard blob-ness might be related to ease of changes. Have you run into the accessible tube maps? I find them useful gauging interchanges as they often have more information.

[nou]

Thanks! I’ve got a copy of the step-free Tube map — are there others? The step-free one is useful to an extent but only discusses interchanges that are actually step-free.

I’m not sure where I got the idea of blobness being related to ease of change. I thought it might have been diamond geezer but I can't find anything there now. It's hard to search for because there's so much stuff about accessibility blobs.

[oursin]

I wouldn't do Charing Cross as it used to be two stations, one Northern Line (Charing X) and one Bakerloo (Trafalgar Square), now joined by a tunnel. I think I'd probably change at Embankment.

[nou]

Thanks! I probably will go for Embankment. katstevens has now warned me about confusing signage there, so I’ll see if I can plan my route in advance via the 3D diagrams.

[cesy]

Blobness is definitely not reliably related to ease of changing.

[nou]

You’re right, it’s not! I had a thought this morning about an easy way of checking, and sure enough Mile End has a double blob despite the cross-platform interchange. I wonder if perhaps there was an attempt to make blobness meaningful a few years ago, and that’s what I’m remembering.

[nou]

Over on LiveJournal, knell has posted a link to the TfL Line Diagram Standard (PDF), which states that blobness is indeed meaningful in this way, but only on line diagrams.

[littlebutfierce]

I don't know in this instance, but sometimes I run the same journey on TfL's site, via Google Maps, & via Citymapper, to see where they suggest I change & how long they say the change will take (sometimes they differ on both points!). Though always good to see if people have real experience w/the journey in question, natch!

[nou]

Ooh, good strategy, thanks! I’ll keep that in mind for the future.

I was amused to see that the first three comments chronologically (across LJ and DW) each suggested a different station. I suppose that does at least mean it wasn’t a stupid question!

[djw]

Maps of every tube station courtesy of Ianvisits. Specifically: Charing Cross (note the disused Jubilee Line platforms, and the Bakerloo is off to the left/west), Embankment and Waterloo.

It's been ages since I had any practical experience of these stations, but on those maps alone I'd go with Waterloo. More connecting passages and shorter overall walk, or so it seems.

[nou]

Thanks for the links! I’m well aware that maps and plans don’t always give an idea of what something’s actually like on the ground (e.g. yesterday’s 4km walk that turned out to be so up-and-down-and-muddy that it took an hour and 45 minutes), but once I have an idea of which interchange I’m going for, I’ll use them to figure out the best way to do it.

[vatine]

I'd probably do it at Embankment. The interchange at Waterloo is, from memory, massive hiking through tunnels nd not actually anywhere close. I may be confusing this with changing between anything and the Jubilee Line at Waterloo...

[nou]

Thanks! It’s the Jubilee that’s a massive pain at Waterloo, as I remember it.

[gerald_duck]

Really? This plan suggests it's just up a flight of stairs, across a concourse and down another flight of stairs. Doing the opposite change southbound, you even save one flight of stairs. (-8