London Underground tests new design information boards

Published on 19th September 2019 by ianVisits in Transport News

The digital screens you see in stations with travel alerts are getting a refresh as TfL has started a trial of a new design.

What are officially known as Electronic Service Update boards (ESUB) have been redesigned to make the screens easier to read, with simplified design and larger fonts, especially for passengers rushing past in a hurry, and to offer information more relevant to that particular station.

For example, a person using a station in North London wants to know in bigger about their local transport issues, and maybe have the Croydon tram in a less prominent place.

The first unit to be upgraded went live yesterday at North Greenwich tube station, and following some testing, you should start to see the new design rolled out across the network in a week or two.

Discussing the new designs, Ben Gammon, Head of Digital at Transport for London, said: “We are always looking at how we can improve our digital signage to make it clearer and more tailored for our customers. This new layout of our Electronic Service Update Boards will help make it easier to see whether lines which serve their specific station are affected by any delays or planned closures. We expect all signs on the Tube network to be updated in the coming weeks, starting with the Jubilee line, and the new layout will also be introduced across other TfL services later this year.”

There are just under 400 Electronic Service Update Boards are in operation across the TfL network.

Tagged with London Underground, North Greenwich station, Transport for London (TfL)

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11 Comments on “London Underground tests new design information boards”

  1. I’m fascinated to understand how much power these signs, and all the new electronic advertising screens spreading the length of escalators are going to use!

    • it’ll basically be the same as a modern PC monitor, so likely something around 30-40w depending on size, the small ones will be more like 20w.

      so 3 of them will give out about as much heat as a person.

      or using some shinky maths and some googling, a short escalator 9m long uses about 1700w, lets assume it has 10 screens on it, they are using 200w, so call it 10%

  2. Hope that when they refer to the Overground they’ll always refer to which line, or even section of line. Mention of ‘severe delays on the Overground’ are worse than useless as ‘the Overground’ includes Romford-Upminster!

    • Totally agree!! Utterly meaningless without more accurate description and more pessimistic than needed.

  4. The way to make the Overground clearer on the TfL Rainbow boards is to give each line a proper name and a dual colour on the map and board. Colour to be with the present yellow for the existing Overground line and with Green edge for the South London Suburban lines when they become part of TfL in due course. The East London Line to be two with the service to Clapham Junction , in far South West to be Brunel Line with G W R Brown inside yellow on maps
    They also need to sort out the confusion on the sub surface Underground lines H & C whose name gets shortened in many confusing ways, Gebecoming Hammer Line (existing purple colour) Edgware Road to Wimbledon /Olympia , still an operationally separate service, becoming Earls Line and a pale yellowy/green colour. The Northern Line to be two lines –via Charing Cross to Battersea Power Station to be Strand Line retaining the Coal Black Colour with some trains terminating at Kennington never Morden. The via Bank to be Lombard Line with Gold colour and always to going towards Morden. North of Camden Town the two lines would share tracks and on Map the two colours being tight against each other(As beyond Rayners Lane)

  5. “What are officially known as Electronic Service Update boards (ESUB) have been redesigned to make the screens easier to read, with simplified design and larger fonts” Wow. That’s pretty ironic given the new generation of dot matrix indicators on tube platforms are the same overall size (height, specifically) as the originals from the 80s BUT squeeze three lines of text in rather than 2! They are almost impossible to read as a result, from far along the platform

  6. Ironically the least important bit of information (Good service on all other lines) stands out the most.

  7. I think the redesign is an improvement, but what it could really do with is some traffic light red/amber/green circles against each named line on the right hand side