permutans/tube-interchange-times

London Tube Interchange Times

Structured interchange and gate-to-platform time estimates for 355 London Underground, DLR, and London Overground stations.

Description

This dataset contains two types of time estimates for each station:

• Gate-to-platform times (column B in the source): the maximum walking time from ticket gates to platform, per line. These are pure walking times with no waiting component.
• Interchange times (column C in the source): the maximum time to transfer between two lines at a station. These are total interchange penalties including both walking and waiting for the next service, not pure walking time. This distinction is important for routing applications.

The data also includes branch interchange times (changing between branches of the same line) and a small number of cross-station interchange references.

Source

Derived from Transport for London's "LU LO DLR interchange values" spreadsheet, obtained via Freedom of Information request (FOI-0986-1516, September 2015). TfL noted at the time of release that the document had not been updated and that changes were likely minimal as there had been few station adjustments.

Station and line identifiers were matched against TfL's station topology data using the tubeulator library.

Contains public sector information licensed under the Open Government Licence v3.0.

Limitations

• The source data is from 2015 and has not been updated by TfL. Stations that have been significantly reconfigured since then (e.g. Bank, Battersea Power Station, Nine Elms) may have inaccurate or missing values.
• Interchange times include waiting time, which varies by time of day and service frequency. Using these values directly as transfer costs in a routing model will overestimate if the model already accounts for headway-based waiting.
• One interchange (West Ham, Hammersmith & City ↔ Jubilee) has no time value in the source data.
• Four stations have notes instead of times: Blackfriars (closed at time of data collection), Vauxhall and Victoria (National Rail operators listed without times).
• The Elizabeth line did not exist when this data was collected and is not represented in interchange values, though it appears in inferred gate-to-platform entries via current station topology.

Schema

Each record represents a station with the following structure:

Top level

Field	Type	Description
station	string	Station name as it appeared in the TfL spreadsheet
station_name_tb	string	Normalised station name matching TfL topology data
station_unique_id	string	TfL StationUniqueId (e.g. HUBWEH, 940GZZLUMED)
gate_to_platform	array	Gate-to-platform walking times per line
interchanges	array	Line-to-line interchange times

Gate-to-platform entries

Field	Type	Description
line	string	Line name (human-readable)
line_slug	string or array	Line identifier slug(s) matching TfL API conventions
minutes	number	Maximum walking time from gate to platform
inferred	boolean	true if the line was not named in the source and was inferred from station topology
note	string	Present instead of minutes when the source contained a note rather than a time

Interchange entries

Standard interchange:

Field	Type	Description
from_line	string	Origin line name
to_line	string	Destination line name
from_line_slug	string	Origin line slug
to_line_slug	string	Destination line slug
minutes	number	Maximum interchange time (walking + waiting)

Branch interchange:

Field	Type	Description
branch_interchange	boolean	true
line	string	Line name
line_slug	string	Line slug
minutes	number	Time to change between branches

Cross-station interchange:

Field	Type	Description
cross_station	string	Name of the other station
minutes	number	Interchange time

Example

{
  "station": "Mile End",
  "station_name_tb": "Mile End",
  "station_unique_id": "940GZZLUMED",
  "gate_to_platform": [
    {"line": "Central", "line_slug": "central", "minutes": 1.5, "inferred": true},
    {"line": "District", "line_slug": "district", "minutes": 1.5, "inferred": true},
    {"line": "Hammersmith & City", "line_slug": "hammersmith-city", "minutes": 1.5, "inferred": true}
  ],
  "interchanges": [
    {"from_line": "Central", "to_line": "District", "minutes": 3, "from_line_slug": "central", "to_line_slug": "district"},
    {"from_line": "Central", "to_line": "Hammersmith & City", "minutes": 3, "from_line_slug": "central", "to_line_slug": "hammersmith-city"},
    {"from_line": "District", "to_line": "Hammersmith & City", "minutes": 3, "from_line_slug": "district", "to_line_slug": "hammersmith-city"}
  ]
}

Citation

If you use this dataset, please attribute both this processed version and the original TfL source:

@dataset{tube_interchange_times_2025,
  title={London Tube Interchange Times},
  author={permutans},
  year={2025},
  url={https://huggingface.co/datasets/permutans/tube-interchange-times},
  note={Derived from TfL FOI-0986-1516. Contains public sector information licensed under the Open Government Licence v3.0.}
}