Trapped in a steel tube underground, it's hard to gauge how far you actually travel. If you're just going a couple stops, are you better off walking? Transport for London, the government body responsible for most of the Greater London area's transport system, released a clever alternate map to tell you just that.
It's called the Walk the Tube map, and it does what it says on the tin. Though the design is mostly identical to Harry Beck's iconic Tube map, it also includes numbers between each stop that let you see how long it would take to get off at that station and walk.
As you might expect, the closer you are to the center of London, the less time it takes to go between stops. Walking between Covent Garden to Leicester Square, or Mansion House to Cannon Street, are all less than five minutes, especially if you're this guy:
If you're going between Denmark Hill and Clapham High Street, though, it would take you a whopping 45 minutes to walk the same distance.
Of course, you can add all the numbers up between stations to figure out how long it would take to walk between multiple stops on a line. It's a clever little map that might encourage some Londoners to save a few pounds by walking, both financially and physically.
What I'd really like to see, though, is a map that compares the speed of walking between stations to time between stations, especially during rush hour. I'd rather lose 5 or 10 minutes and get a pleasant walk in, if the alternative is packing myself into a busy subway car like an anchovy just to get to my destination a few minutes earlier.
[via Gizmodo]