Apparently Bike Station and Edinburgh and Lothian Greenspace Trust have been awarded £98,100 to produce a "London Underground map for cycle network", this rather begs the question: why? Mark Sydenham is quoted as saying that he didn't know "that you can get from Cramond to Portobello with only having to go on 200 metres of road. It's amazing how much of the network there is there." Yet there is a SPOKES cycle map on the wall in his office. We are also told there will be an on-line version with geo-tagged suggestions, pictures, and videos, but edinburgh.cyclestreets.net already does that as well, so why another map?
CityCyclingEdinburgh Forum » Debate!
Do we need another Edunburgh cycle map?
(60 posts)-
Posted 13 years ago #
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I had assumed the 'tube map' would be a stylised diagram of where Edinburgh's off road paths are - not that they link up that comprehensively - which could be a useful aid to 'marketing' cycling .
HOWEVER
£98k is a considerable amount of money. CycleStreets is currently looking for £30k for continuing developing for the whole of the UK.
http://www.cyclestreets.net/blog/2011/02/04/helping-campaigners-campaign
Posted 13 years ago # -
Give me a couple of months to work on it and I'll do it for a grand. In between everything else I have to do as well.
I have a lot of the necessary artwork already from another project. It's not that hard to do.Seriously, £98K? What planet are they on?
Posted 13 years ago # -
Ah, I've found the one I did back in 2005 - done for free over a couple of nights with access to the internet and a basic piece of drawing software.
Those amongst us who have an interest in the subject matter will realise it's riddled with subtle factual inaccuracies :)
But, it illustrates the concept and also illustrates how thoroughly confusing and geographically unhelpful it really is!
Posted 13 years ago # -
@kaputnik
FABULOUS
Needs to be widely available...
Wouldn't be too difficult to highlight current cycle paths(?)
Posted 13 years ago # -
That is indeed fabulous. Should have your name on it, copyright and all that!!
Posted 13 years ago # -
I'll put my name on it when it's correct (and uses a less garish colour scheme), and not before! :)
Posted 13 years ago # -
Okay!! :-P
Posted 13 years ago # -
your right, that is useless!
Posted 13 years ago # -
Seriously - is it any more than a scam to get money off the coonsil and some publicity?
Posted 13 years ago # -
It does one thing really well: as alluded to above, it shows up the gaping holes in the network that £98K would go a small way towards filling.
Posted 13 years ago # -
Just don't use it to try get a train to Ferry Road, Pilrig Street or Leith Walk West. They aren't built. Yet.
Posted 13 years ago # -
It does one thing really well: as alluded to above, it shows up the gaping holes in the network that £98K would go a small way towards filling.
Better than the Spokes one does? I don't see how. For a start, the Spokes map is based on "real-world" geography where the distance on the map is proportional to the distance on the ground. I could draw up a stylise map showing Musselburgh and Leith adjacent to each other, suggesting there was only a short distance between them.
Posted 13 years ago # -
Of course the Spokes map does - my one is a little old, but has many potential new routes marked on it that in the years since the 6th edition have yet to be constructed.
And they produce not one, but five excellent maps, and on a shoestring budget too.
Perhaps the money awarded would be better spent on more signage (incorporating sections of the Spokes maps) and more visible integration of off road paths with the public highways; maybe it's an isolated case, but I used to work with lifelong city residents who did not know even half of the paths on the Spokes map when I used it in work during successive Bike Weeks. And my colleagues not having of the greatest levels of fitness would, as you point out druidh, be a bit of an issue if they were to base their ride on a stylised map.
Why not give some local schools the challenge to come up with vibrant signs for the entrance points to the routes (something that clearly identifies the route with the area), then you've got two birds with one stone - better visibility of the routes and greater awareness in the coming generation. And who knows, those same kids might bug their parents to go for a ride on the path so the kids can show off their sign...
Posted 13 years ago # -
New map is on line.
http://www.thebikestation.org.uk/innertube-map/Posted 13 years ago # -
New map is on line.
Is it meant to be a piece of agit-prop? Here are the gaps now we all know what we need to do next? By restricting itself to the recognised routes it misses out neat short-cuts like the one chdot found through the West End. Is that level of detail the ultimate intention?
Posted 13 years ago # -
I've only now had a good look at it (was feeding child and posting from phone)...
I'll say this for it, if the cycle network was a rail network the railway would have never got off the ground.
Posted 13 years ago # -
"Is it meant to be a piece of agit-prop?"
That's an interesting suggestion.
It's certainly striking that The Meadows area is completely disconnected from the rest of the 'network'.
Clearly it's 'simplified' but as it's not all off-road it seems strange to miss crucial links like Telfer Subway and the curious route from Leamington Lift Bridge to Dalry Road which crosses the WAR.
I can't understand why Roseburn Place is mentioned twice but not joined up.
Also missing is DMains to Cramond Brig and onwards.
I hope it will show people routes they didn't know about and encourage them to explore (perhaps with the help of a 'proper' map), but there's certainly the potential for much confusion...
Posted 13 years ago # -
I'll say this for it, if the cycle network was a rail network the railway would have never got off the ground.
I think the next edition could indicate the distances between some of the end points. For example, supposing you really are unwilling to use the roads, you can still walk from Leith Links to Sandport Street in about 5-10 minutes. The gap between the Pleasance and the Meadows is maybe less than that. Then the map would seem much more joined up.
Posted 13 years ago # -
I've been in Edinburgh for 10 years now and I had to concentrate hard to work out where the paths are that I use every single day.
I'd rather have had £100k of pruning this summer.
Posted 13 years ago # -
Like Dave, I've been here a little over ten years and like to think I know the city pretty well, and it needs a lot of concentration to work out where things are. You need a proper map to make sense of it, so why not have the two maps combined into one showing routes superimposed onto a road map of the city? Maybe yuo could even then show the 'on road' lanes as well. Maybe call it... the Spokes Map or something, that would be neat.
I was willing to give this the benefit of the doubt as an exercise in promotion of cycling, but honestly, I can't see this actually helping anyone work out easy ways of gettign from A to B...
Posted 13 years ago # -
@Dave - I share some of your frustration at the apparent cost of this.
The Inner Tube Map team have been on Radio Scotland this morning explaining what they are doing. I missed it and it's not on iPlayer or Listen Again.
Posted 13 years ago # -
"I share some of your frustration at the apparent cost of this."
Money not just for map, not sure what proportion or what else will be done to mark actual routes.
Posted 13 years ago # -
"The Inner Tube Map team have been on Radio Scotland this morning explaining what they are doing. I missed it and it's not on iPlayer or Listen Again. "
They may well have a rummage round the internet to see if it is being talked about and get led to here.
I suppose if the map is small it will be easy for people to pick up and have a look at and will serve as a starting point for finding the cycle paths. Plus you can download it for free and it is aimed at people who do not about the off road cycle paths. These people are unlikely to pay for a Spokes map that they do not think will have any off road paths on it because they don't know about them. Maybe?
Posted 13 years ago # -
Ah. Well, I am willing to concede that a sign in the park saying "this path goes all the way to Joppa" would be good value as an awareness-raising tool. For some reason I thought it had cost £100k to produce the map, which I thought was a *very* "This Is Edinburgh" result.
Posted 13 years ago # -
Aye yes, I must admit I thought the same thing but surely even in Edinburgh, we couldn't spend that much on a map? The quote from the webpage on the money is:-
"To develop the map further, the Bike Station and Edinburgh and Lothian Greenspace Trust have been awarded over £98,000 funding from the People's Postcode Lottery's Dream Fund for the next twelve months to carry out conservation work along the paths in the North of Edinburgh, as well as to improve the signage and other amenities, in conjunction with others including City of Edinburgh Council. "
Sounds good to me and yes, hopefully it will include some pruning, preferably before the paths become so dangerously narrow!
Posted 13 years ago # -
If it's paying for signs hopefully there's a bit budgeted for repair, replacement and upkeep. When I first found out about the north Edinburgh network those information-board things dotted along it (I think there was one at every former station) all had information displayed on them though all have since been incinerated by neds. Similarly the more recently-installed path-name signs and road-label signs near the various bridges are starting to become neglected.
Posted 13 years ago # -
Of course what we really need is a map show the dodgy bits (accident stats don't show the whole story) and worst road surfaces.
And a 'smaller' map showing the smooth bits...
Posted 13 years ago # -
Ive got a paper copy. I like the back of it.
Posted 13 years ago # -
I take it we all get off our bikes and push when we want to navigate through the "missing" section in the middle of town? AS people have said, is this agit-prop to put people off thinking it's possible to safely cycle across the middle of town?
Telfer Underpass and the various connecting pieces of connecting path through old Dalry Road station appear to have been forgotten about (all signed as cycle route?). Always in the last place you look.
Street names are easier to read if you drop the capitalisation and birl them around so they are horizontal. Like the "real" underground map. The latter also has the reference point of the Thames running through it. Water of Leith might be a useful marker in the background on this.
It's a reasonably pretty piece of design and it is a first edition, so I'm sure feedback will be taken on board and improvements can be made.
On a practical level, if it might make people look at it and think "ooh, I can go there? how do I do that?" and then look up cyclestreets or a spokes map, maybe it has achieved something.
I notice Signage varies along the routes, and does not necessarily follow the logic of this map.
Slightly concerning. I take it the plan is to spend the rest of the £98k left over from designing the map to alter the signage to confer with the logic on the map. Let's therefore hope the logic in the map is right!
Posted 13 years ago #
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