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compass roses in the pavement at the exit to every tube station in London

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For post-travel orienting.
hippo, Feb 13 2013

Map with North Indicator on the floor http://goo.gl/maps/H76DM
I haven't checked map boards outside stations,but I was surprised when I found this one... They might already exist. [Dub, Feb 13 2013]

moral compass http://archemdis.fi...2/moral-compass.jpg
seems some of the groundwork has already been done [not_morrison_rm, Feb 14 2013]

someone has started doing this in NYC http://nyctheblog.b...ect-expands-to.html
[xandram, Feb 14 2013]

[link]






       Yes! A fantastic idea. An alternative would be to have each of the above ground components of each tube station mounted on large compass, such that when London rotates on its axis, commuters are not left heading north when they mean to go south and so on.
calum, Feb 13 2013
  

       Ahh boring. In Japan they can't even be arsed to have North being the top of any the maps in the stations. Now that make it interesting.   

       Not even mentioning Osaka's Cosmo Square station, where the exit map on the platform level gives the exits and all attractions nearby, but then doesn't say which exit leads to which attraction....
not_morrison_rm, Feb 13 2013
  

       Yes, I'd support compass roses be mandatorially placed outside locations wherever people find themselves deposited - be it air, rail, underground or other terminals. Ideally, at street corners too.
zen_tom, Feb 13 2013
  

       You might have a point, but by dint of actually looking at the A-Z it gives the house/building numbers for that street, so all you have to do is find 2 numbers then you know   

       1) which side of the road you are on and   

       2) which direction to go anyway....   

       I always just carry a small piece of tree-trunk, with some moss on it.   

       Oh and once you've got the A-Z you can then play A-Z Tarot. simply look up your own surname, find the street, then examine the surrounding streets. Worked for me.
not_morrison_rm, Feb 13 2013
  

       [not_m_rm] "AZ Tarot"?!
hippo, Feb 13 2013
  

       I'd like to have compass points set into the pavement at every street corner in every metropolis, and street signs that indicate the closest eight-point bearing. In the wilderness, I have an innate sense of direction, but I am stripped of it entirely in a big city. I've gotten turned around and hopelessly lost in Boston so many times that we now plan ahead for it.   

       Here's most of a bun for making an excellent start.
Alterother, Feb 13 2013
  

       If the compass roses were appropriately bumpy, it would be a real help to the blind/partially sighted too, they tend to rely on cardinal directions, with road names and other signage being very optical things.
bs0u0155, Feb 13 2013
  

       Hippo-san, it worked for me. Had one friend called Sabine, really not a common name. Looked up Morrison Street and Sabine Rd was the next to it.   

       The A-Z sees all, knows all...
not_morrison_rm, Feb 13 2013
  

       To be fair, [Alter], the only purpose of Boston is to get people as lost as humanly possible.
MechE, Feb 13 2013
  

       This is a disappointingly excellent idea, making it exceedingly difficult to make a humorously cutting remark in an annotation.
MaxwellBuchanan, Feb 13 2013
  

       Are we sure the plural of compass rose is compass roses?
DIYMatt, Feb 13 2013
  

       This is easy. Every direction is south.
RayfordSteele, Feb 13 2013
  

       You're obviously not trying hard enough, MB.

hippo, this is an excellent idea. Especially for someone of your limited talent.
DrBob, Feb 13 2013
  

       Quite true, [Mech]. I mean, whodafuk has three different subway stations with the same name? Sadly, however, this affliction seems to strike me in any dense urban environment. I think it's all the steel messing with my ethmoidal magnetite.
Alterother, Feb 13 2013
  

       I like this. I have a strong sense of direction, but it occasionally gets crossed up, and then it is confusing as hell.   

       I'd also like to see a compass rose overhead, inside the buildings, where it is easier to see.   

       I'm also wanting directional posts, like what are under weather vanes, scattered around outside.
baconbrain, Feb 13 2013
  

       This is brilliant. Shopping malls in particular could do with them as well (unless it's like the way shopping malls don't have clocks - they WANT you to get lost and keep shopping...).
[baconbrain], putting a rose on the ceiling will confuse some people, as it will show East and West "back to front" (relative to North and South). Star maps have the same effect; "if North is at the top, why is East on the left?" It can take a bit to realise that it's viewed from underneath.
neutrinos_shadow, Feb 13 2013
  

       This is a good idea for any subway system. Many phones have compasses built in, but this would be even easier.   

       When I was in New York for a couple of months, I mentioned to a friend that I would always get disoriented when leaving the subway. She explained to me that the trick was to memorize which direction each of the avenues runs (i.e. uptown or downtown). I didn't quite get the hang of it by the time I left, but it was a pretty effective way of navigating, and it had the bonus of distinguishing the locals from the tourists, which is apparently a very big deal to New Yorkers.
ytk, Feb 13 2013
  

       Somewhat baked, perhaps? Look on the floor of many of the map boards in London... Some of them have a North indicator (I haven't studied a lot of them, but I did notice one here (Linky))   

       {I did get a photo of it, when I was there, but I'll have to look for the shot}
Dub, Feb 13 2013
  

       Not just London: here one or more of the stations' exits are often on unrelated side-streets a block away from the main intersection, clearly marked as say "Rumpleford Ave", but with no indication as to where the hell Rumpleford Avenue actually is in the grand scheme of things.
FlyingToaster, Feb 13 2013
  

       the council could do this pretty easily with the stencil-jetwash system where they clean a graphic into the pavement.
bs0u0155, Feb 13 2013
  

       Not such a good idea, especially if the Germans invade.
UnaBubba, Feb 13 2013
  

       there's no chance of that: they'd be so poor after bailing us out, after we'd spent a whole lot of money on anti-German invasion defences, that they wouldn't be able to afford the invasion they just paid to prevent.
bs0u0155, Feb 13 2013
  

       //My good friends, for the second time in our history, a British Prime Minister has returned from Germany bringing peace with honour. I believe it is peace for our time. We thank you from the bottom of our hearts. Go home and get a nice quiet sleep.//
UnaBubba, Feb 13 2013
  

       //Not such a good idea, especially if the Germans invade.//   

       Ah ha! That is why the compass roses would be on turntables which, in the event of invasion, would all swivel to some new, random direction. I call this tactic the "Compass Ruse".
AusCan531, Feb 13 2013
  

       Just do what we do in New York, and navigate by the sun. Oh, yeah, it's London...
DrCurry, Feb 14 2013
  

       //Just do what we do in New York, and navigate by the sun   

       That's a good point, I need to splice in that luminescence gene into the moss on my piece of tree trunk, then it'll work equally well in poor light.
not_morrison_rm, Feb 14 2013
  

       Sun in New York? There might be one spot in Central Park that gets at an hour of sun per day from between the skyscrapers...
RayfordSteele, Feb 14 2013
  

       I'm working under the theory that he only goes out for (a slightly late) lunch, when the sun lines up with the avenues, and you might actually get directions from it.   

       In case I hadn't made this clear, this idea is pure genius in a "why hasn't anyone thought of it before" way, and needs to be implemented immediately, world wide.
MechE, Feb 14 2013
  

       Agreed. Especially in Boston. The idea is solid gold if taken beyond the subway (certainly sterling in present form). My only gripe is that my ethmoidal magnetite remark did not kick off a fiery debate.
Alterother, Feb 14 2013
  

       On further reflection, I think that a plain old compass rose is a bit of a cop-out. What is needed is an actual magnetised compass, set into the pavement beneath a lucite shield, an example in its fixity, in its real but very limited utility, to every commuter who finds themselves restricted by circumstances within or outwith their control. A moral lesson and a directional aid together.
calum, Feb 14 2013
  

       // A moral lesson   

       Thinking no one's actually done a moral compass on here yet, but I'm sure there's an app for it.
not_morrison_rm, Feb 14 2013
  

       you could finance them.... simply have the compass set with the 4 cardinal directions and one extra a kind of "that way is North, but that way is Starbucks, about 400m"
bs0u0155, Feb 14 2013
  

       [not_m_rm] I like that - you could make money out of that sort of pseudo-psychic stuff.
hippo, Feb 14 2013
  
      
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