Poor American maps

[fredsie]

Why are American maps so bad? Admittedly they're often free, but those "single thin line" US (and Canadian) maps are all but useless when it comes to finding a particular place. Junctions are not marked clearly, things seems to be in the wrong places, etc. I don't get it. :-)

[VHG]

Well we have the Ordnance Survey people in the UK who produce our map data, and a great job they make if it to.

The Ordnance Survey maps are a work of art, and can go down to the level of individual buildings.

Maybe the USA dont have the equivalent of the Ordnance Survey people so their maps are not so good.

I have just finished reading the Lost Continent by Bill Bryson where he drives round the USA by car (and very funny it is to). It was written 20 years ago.

In that book he complains a lot about how poor the USA maps are.

[KARL]

The explanation lies mostly withing tradition and cultural differences - also, maps are not that easy to find in the US. The US public has for generations received poorer education than more or less all Europeans, at all levels except in the case of the very best (and most expensive) establishments where the standards are every bit as good and effective as the best found in Europe. The result is that the vast majority of Americans do not really know how to read a map and as a result maps are more for very general indication only, not for any real detail. Unlike in most of Europe, you very often find that if you ask for directions, the person will not be able to help because their local navigational knowledge is poor and frequently they don't know of landmarks/places practically just around the corner. This is largely because they think in point-to-point terms (and blank out things in between) as they travel by car, taxi or bus (and of course aircraft). The one notable exception are those of them who have been taught to map-read in the military, but they are a particular class (within the military). The armed forces (as everywhwere) are a secretive bunch but they have more or less always had excellent maps (not least of foreign countries) and many/most international flight navigation maps in use today are based on the US Air Force catalogue. I suspect that had there been a local demand then good maps would have found their way onto the US market. The advent of GPS navigation will probably totally block any such development (robotic thinking is widespread among Americans). Also, just like in Britain, there are lots of people who either don't want knowledge or else don't care about its existence - a type of class-creation maintained from below (includes inverted snobbery: "woooo. he can read a map, woooooo").

[jno]

well, you don't get much more fine-detail accuracy than Google maps, which are American.

[KARL]

jno's response brings me to explain that I assumed the question related to printed maps - perhaps that was incorrect. There have always been specialised sources for maps, in the USA and elsewhere. But over the USA counter versions have differed in availability, standard and usefulness from those better and much more widely available in Europe (for example). As in so many countries, people gravitate toward the internet material of their choice and interest. There are those who are very conversant with youtube, facebook, etc. but have rarely looked at Google Maps (if ever). Others visit and compare online map data, etc. quite frequently. It would be interesting to learn how the "per connected capita" figures on online hits compare from country to country.

[fredsie]

Yes, I was asking about printed maps. Google maps are of course generally better overall than the ones I'm complaining about (although I'd still generally prefer the UK Ordnance Survey or say the French equivalent IGN where available) but of course Google isn't always available wherever you might want it.

jno's mention of Google and VHG's comment about the source data has however made me wonder further about the problem, since the Google example demonstrates that the data is available, so it seems that the map-makers just don't or can't use it.

I'm attracted to to the logic in KARL's replies - the US is certainly a culture where if there's a demand for something, someone will provide it! So maybe the locals really aren't interested in, or are not able to interpret, detailed maps. Or maybe they just rarely go anywhere! I'd heard once that a large proportion of the population of any State had never been outside it. Doubtless that's changed somewhat now, but even then they may just go from taxi to airport to airport to taxi. I'm sure the average American would have had just as much trouble as I once did trying to get from Orlando International Airport to my hotel on International Drive using just the free map provided by Alamo!

[sitges]

You need to go to a map company that does nothing but maps in order to get ones that are current. You also need to look at the date that map was printed. Our roads and highways change faster then the map people can print new maps which are very expenxsive. Even your Michelin maps etc that are produced in Europe are not up to par with the ones that are for Europe. Who knows why....Perhaps it is because we don't care about really detailed maps when we are driving across country. You have to realize that a really detailed map of even a individual state would be almost as big as the one for the entire area of Great Britan.

[stewey]

Fredsie, what do you mean by "a single thin line"?

[fredsie]

stewey: Not sure if you've seen typical US maps, particularly the free ones you get at petrol stations etc, but they represent all roads as single thin black lines, so you have no idea whether a particular road is a motorway, major dual road, single road or a dirt track. UK maps show different classes of road in different widths / colours so you can see at a glance what you have. (Also the scale seems to be suspect on some maps I've had, so that an inch on one part won't be the same distance on other parts of the map).

[cc1]

We've just come back from a 5 week road trip round the South West states, we tend to stock up on Rand Mc Nally maps, there's usually 1 per state and they have enlarged bits for major areas. We've never had more than the odd glich with these.