World Wide Words Live map of London Underground trains Loading... Powered by Leaflet — Map tiles © Thunderforest, data © OpenStreetMap contributors. Live London Underground map By Matthew Somerville. Data collected: Mon, 05 Sep 2016 08:33:02 +0100 <div style="border: solid 2px #cc0000; padding: 5px; width: 70%; margin: 1em auto;"> I'm afraid that this page requires JavaScript to draw the maps and plot move the trains, which isn't possible with just HTML. More information Hide What is this? This map shows all trains (yellow dots) on the London Underground network in approximately real time. I have similar things for the London buses and National Rail, and an awesome bookmarkable train times journey planner. — Matthew How does it work? Live departure data is fetched from the TfL API, and then it does a bit of maths and magic. Who did this? Matthew Somerville (with helpful hinderances from Frances Berriman and James Aylett). Originally built at Science Hackday, June 2010.
Topological Maps (Graphs By Another Name) Although many people think of a line graph when they hear the word "graph", the success of online social networking sites such as Facebook, MySpace and Bebo has popularised another use of the word, in the sense of "the social graph". This actually makes reference to a mathematical structure known as a graph, a network like structure that describes how sets of points (more correctly referred to as nodes) are connected to other points (i.e. other nodes) by edges that describe some relationship (or relation) between them. One of the most widely know graphs is the graph of the London Underground (which also just happens to be a topological map - that is, a map with all the superfluous information (relative to the task at hand) removed from it: As with the Periodic Table of Chemical Elements, so recognisable is this visual representation and the 'visual literacy' conventions it has established, that its design ideas have been widely adopted elsewhere. Try the interactive travel time tube map.