The issue is that people slide from it being a good map for some particular purpose to some blanket claim that all people really need to know is is <insert specific thing here>. The old classic case of this is geographically challenged reporters raphsodising about the London tube map https://tfl.gov.uk/maps/track/tube.

I love the London tube map, but when I lived there, it was all the more useful to me because I look at other maps so that I could know that certain stations were in easy walking distance from each other or some other place I was going to.

I disagree about the London tube map. I think it's brilliant. I barely looked at a real map any of the times I've stayed in London. I know the places I want to go, all the guide books (and locals!) tell you the nearest tube station, I know the nearest tube station to where I am. Why do I need a 'real' map?

>> Why do I need a 'real' map?

Canonical answer: Queensway to Bayswater

Tube route: Queensway → Notting Hill Gate change train Notting Hill Gate → Bayswater The journey time between these two London underground stations is approximately 15 minutes

Or just walk. It takes 2 minutes.

Having lived in London for a while now, I find myself preferring the tube lines overlaid on a physical map, so that you can reason better about how to get where you want to go (obviously supplemented heavily by Citymapper and Google maps).

I guess that when your abstraction is at the level of start station and end station, that is where the value of the tube map is.