About a week ago, I got in contact with as many of the state DOTs as I could to find the latest editions of their state highway maps. I think I was able to order all the states except for Alaska and Washington State. I have already received about a dozen. So as the maps trickle in, I will be posting grades from 1 to 10 for their maps based on a few categories:
1. Ease of reading. Can I distinguish between an interstate, tollway and other divided expressways and freeways. City name size. County seats. Distinguishing county boundaries and names. Etc. Mainly looking at this from a standpoint of someone who is not a roadgeek like us.
2. Quality of information. City inset maps. Mileage charts. Mileage between exits or towns.
3. Utilizing the space for actual useful information. One big pet peeve of mine is when they post several pictures of landscapes and things instead of useful driving or points of interest information.
4. Accuracy. Obviously each map has small intentional errors for copyright reasons. Glaring errors. Missing exits. That kind of thing.
5. Overall look.
So the final grades will be between 5 and 50 with 50 being the best.
Let the games begin!
NEW YORK:
https://www.iloveny.com/travel-tools/guides/c. 2018
14 City/Region Insets: New York City, Midtown and Lower Manhattan, Syracuse, Rochester, Buffalo/Niagara Falls, Rome, Watertown, Ithaca, Binghamton, Saratoga Springs, Utica, Elmira/Corning, Albany/Troy/Schenectady, Long Island
1: Red for the NYS Thruway. Green for other freeways. Amber for multilane divided highways. Does use 2 types of red for state roads that are not freeways. Major county roads are shown but not labelled. The city name size is very small. Gray lines for county boundaries are easy to read but the county names are small.
Grade: 7
2: Very readable city index with some city populations. Has an index for state parks and points of interest. Index for major airports. Decent mileage chart (29 x 29). Could use a few more cities within the state. There is NO mileage between exits or towns at all. The exit numbers for the interstates are in sequence and not mileage based so you have to get out the ruler to measure that Dunkirk to Hamburg is about 25 miles on the NYS Thruway. Could use city insets for Newburgh (28k), Kingston (23k), Poughkeepsie (32k), White Plains (56k), Middletown (28k) since Watertown is 27k.
Grade: 4 Having to guess the mileage is a big hit.
3: Each region has one picture with a name of what it is and then about a dozen points of interest in the region with the city name and coordinates of the location. Also has regional offices that you can get more localized information.
Grade: 10
4: I have not found any glaring errors.
Grade: 10
5: In general, this is a good state issued map. Having it be a 2018 edition though does not give it full marks.
Grade: 8
Final Grade: 39
BONUS Points for no pictures of the Governor, Secretary of State, etc.