Un-Goo-Ground
The idea for this project came to me when I wanted to find out routes of buses when I moved in to London. Just like a few of the famous Google maps (http://meat.net/map/) I thought I could plot London bus routes on a version of Google Maps to show me routes that I needed.
Having realised how complex the bus route system, and not being able to think about how I would obtain the co-ordinates I parked the idea. A month later I found a map of the Underground that show the true routes and not version by Harry Beck. The idea of building Underground / Google mash-up was born.
For those of you not familiar with google maps, you can click and drag by using your mouse. If you want to zoom in on the map, then do so with the slider on the left of the map itself. Please be patient while the take a moment to draw themselves.
- Latest Version
- Building Stations into lines
- Getting Stations Co-ordinates
- Original List of stations, I actually found the initial co-ordinates from its discussion page.
January 5th, 2006 at 11:03 pm Cool implementation of google map with the London tube. I have a question, how did you converted location to long/lat? Is there published data that shows long/lat for each corresponding postal code? Thanks, Ray
January 8th, 2006 at 3:53 pm If only their was published information on long/lat! The closest publically available information that I could find was here http://www.jibble.org/ukpostcodes/, and this data is clearly not accurate enough. This is the method I used 1. From Wikipedia I managed to get a list of all the stations on the underground with their long and lat. 2. I got the post codes for each station (can remember where) and the long lat data from jibble. 3. Both sets of information were matched to each other and fed in to a database. So for each station I had an approximate location. 4. I then mocked up a script that pulled the data from the database, moved the map to its location and allowed me to change the long and lat data so that it was accurate. 5. This script can be seen in its demo form here http://oliverjenkins.com/gu_stationmap.php Click the Update button to get a random station. You can then update its co-ordinates by clicking on the map itself. Existing points can be removed by clicking on them. Clicking on the update button would sent the information back to the server and update the location in the database (now disabled). Originally the co-ords. 6. Originally the script went through each station in turn, and I made the change for each station! To get the order of the station for each line, I mocked up a simple drag and drop utility (http://oliverjenkins.com/gu_dragline.php) that allowed me to order the station for each line from an underground map. Select the Tube line, then click the Go button to get its stations. Each station needed to be dragged in to the box on the right from the list on the left. The box no the bottom is filled with the data needed to order the stations for the line in the database. Hope this helps Oliver
January 8th, 2006 at 5:11 pm your drag and drop utility is even cooler. Very nice. Thanks for the pointer to UK postcodes. I will play with that and see where I get to. Thanks, Ray