Paper Maps going way of public Telephone

[Hot Rod Hootenanny]

Evidently the Columbus Dispatch has a quota on highway news articles.
http://www.dispatch.com/content/stories/local/2012/04/09/paper-map-going-way-of-public-telephone.html
Bertin, go send Vitale an email with all your freeway proposals for the next time they have a slow day at the office.

[NE2]

You mean people are peeing in them?

[Henry]

Either that, or they're just not as popular as they used to be. Besides, Mapquest and GPS navigation are the way to go in the technology-driven 21st century.

[A.J. Bertin]

This is sad. I'm very much old-school when it comes to this kinda stuff. I love using paper maps and refuse to buy a GPS unit.

When I was on a plane ride a few months ago, I was looking at my large road atlas just reading maps for fun of different U.S. states. A woman sitting next to me on the plane, who had coincidentally been employed at Rand McNally, seemed to be impressed by the fact that I was reading an actual atlas.

It is a sad state of affairs that so many people don't know how to read maps anymore. They just blindly follow GPS units and don't have a grasp of the bigger picture with regard to where they are going. 

[texaskdog]

I hate when someone refuses to listen to my directions because they have a GPS.  Then they tell me the convuluted way GPS told them to go.
Post Merge: April 13, 2012, 07:48:02 PM
Ever been forced to take a rental car with one, and yelled at the GPS to shut up when it told you to go a stupid way?

[kurumi]

I hate when someone refuses to listen to my directions because they have a GPS.  Then they tell me the convuluted way GPS told them to go.

I still prefer their using a GPS to the dreaded "we'll just follow you" option. At 10 mph below the speed limit. And it's the end of the world if they're for a moment out of your sight.

[Truvelo]

GPS is handy in some ways and useless in others.

For example if I make a mistake in town I can take a quick look at the GPS to see if there's any side streets I can take to get me to the correct road. Where GPS is useless is when trying to find a route over large areas as zooming out reduces the detail to just the major roads. A paper map on the other hand retains its detail no matter how far away I look.

I always keep a paper atlas in the car and take one with me when driving abroad. If there's any areas I need in detail I will print a Google Map screengrab.

[kphoger]

Almost of all my company's cable technicians have GPS units in their work trucks.  One guy in particualr gets a paper city map for every town he goes to work in.  If it's not in the paper map, he calls us to MapQuest/Google/Bing directions for him.  This gets annoying.  But, whatever.  The really annoying part is when he chooses to ignore the directions we give him.

Paper maps are often out of date.  The best luck I've had finding up-to-date city maps to beat online services like Google Maps is to try and find an official map on the town's official website.  Not all towns have that, but they're a goldmine when you can find one (Manhattan, KS, coming immediately to mind, as Google Maps and MapQuest were sorely out of date last time I checked).

[hobsini2]

I hate when someone refuses to listen to my directions because they have a GPS.  Then they tell me the convuluted way GPS told them to go.

I still prefer their using a GPS to the dreaded "we'll just follow you" option. At 10 mph below the speed limit. And it's the end of the world if they're for a moment out of your sight.

Kurumi, you're not kidding. Couple years ago my brother and I drove his family and me in 2 cars from suburban Chicago to Virginia. (Keep in mind that he has a bigger lead foot than I but he was following me.) All was good until we got near Elkins WV.  Somehow in the mountains along US 33, he got lost even though I told him that we are staying on 33 the whole way.  When daylight broke at the VA/WV border, I pulled over to wait for him before getting into Harrisonburg.  My neice and I waited almost 45 minutes before he finally showed up. Thank god for the Waffle House in Harrisonburg so I could calm down and not scream at him for being an idiot.

[agentsteel53]

Kurumi, you're not kidding. Couple years ago my brother and I drove his family and me in 2 cars from suburban Chicago to Virginia. (Keep in mind that he has a bigger lead foot than I but he was following me.) All was good until we got near Elkins WV.  Somehow in the mountains along US 33, he got lost even though I told him that we are staying on 33 the whole way.  When daylight broke at the VA/WV border, I pulled over to wait for him before getting into Harrisonburg.  My neice and I waited almost 45 minutes before he finally showed up. Thank god for the Waffle House in Harrisonburg so I could calm down and not scream at him for being an idiot.

this must've been before cell phones.  I'd done that a few times too... and we always made a backup plan of "find us at such and such a landmark in this town".  If it was a town we'd never been to, it was the post office, as we figured it would be easy to find with local help.  luckily it never came to that.

[bulldog1979]

I also have an affinity for paper maps. No GPS will ever replace my 1927 AAA paper map of Michigan showing US 102. Nor will a GPS replace my MSHD maps from the 1950s and 1960s. That said, GPSs have their use.

[froggie]

this must've been before cell phones.

Doesn't matter.  The area they went through has minimal cell phone service.

While I agree with AJ's passion for mapreading, I disagree with him on GPS units.  True, people over-rely on them for directions, but they're very handy for tracking one's trips.  It's also useful having a tablet with a built-in GPS and the ability to download and store numerous maps, including 7.5-series USGS topos (which I use especially for those areas that lack 3G coverage).  This way, I only need to carry a tablet instead of a bunch of DeLormes or large atlases.

[agentsteel53]

this must've been before cell phones.

Doesn't matter.  The area they went through has minimal cell phone service.

good point.  In a pinch, that without a meet-up plan and shitty reception, my backup plan would be to go to a town, use a land line (they still have those, right?), and hope that the other party's cell phone does have reception.  At the very least, leave a voicemail.

[A.J. Bertin]

this must've been before cell phones.

While I agree with AJ's passion for mapreading, I disagree with him on GPS units.  True, people over-rely on them for directions, but they're very handy for tracking one's trips.  It's also useful having a tablet with a built-in GPS and the ability to download and store numerous maps, including 7.5-series USGS topos (which I use especially for those areas that lack 3G coverage).  This way, I only need to carry a tablet instead of a bunch of DeLormes or large atlases.

I have to admit that, for me, if someone were to ever give me a GPS unit, the one thing I'd want to use it for would be to locate certain features like restaurants or attractions in different geographic areas. For instance, if I'm in a city I've never been before and I have a craving for Chili's, it would be nice to look at the GPS which will help me find a Chili's.

Even though that convenience would be nice, I'm very much a minimalist when it comes to stuff like GPS units and other forms of technology. People survived just fine before GPS units came into the picture, and I'm perfectly happy not owning one. I prefer to not depend on stuff like that. :-)

[1995hoo]

Kurumi, you're not kidding. Couple years ago my brother and I drove his family and me in 2 cars from suburban Chicago to Virginia. (Keep in mind that he has a bigger lead foot than I but he was following me.) All was good until we got near Elkins WV.  Somehow in the mountains along US 33, he got lost even though I told him that we are staying on 33 the whole way.  When daylight broke at the VA/WV border, I pulled over to wait for him before getting into Harrisonburg.  My neice and I waited almost 45 minutes before he finally showed up. Thank god for the Waffle House in Harrisonburg so I could calm down and not scream at him for being an idiot.

this must've been before cell phones.  I'd done that a few times too... and we always made a backup plan of "find us at such and such a landmark in this town".  If it was a town we'd never been to, it was the post office, as we figured it would be easy to find with local help.  luckily it never came to that.

We used to do that on Boy Scout trips when I was growing up–on the annual ski trip to Seven Springs up in Pennsylvania, for example, all the drivers were to stop at the McDonald's in Breezewood to regroup before we got on the Turnpike so we'd know if anyone had gotten lost (and, indeed, one year someone somehow did get lost, though I still have no idea how). It worked pretty well most of the time.

I have a built-in GPS unit in one car and I quite like it for various reasons. While I tend to know where I'm going and what roads I want, I find that on a long trip on a road I don't use regularly it's nice to have the thing giving me distance and ETA. I like having the "find nearest gas station" or "find nearest ATM" or whatever, especially if I'm on a more rural highway in an area I don't know. Not all states are as good as others about posting signs for gas and the like. Also, mine has a joystick control option, which makes scrolling very easy–if I'm stuck in traffic and I want to find an alternate route and the sat-nav lady doesn't seem to want to give me one, I can shove the joystick around looking at options. The other thing about my built-in unit is that its voice control also controls the radio and the climate control, which can be very convenient.

A GPS unit can never replace a map for giving you the big picture and I think there's always a good use for maps at home. I also keep a 2005-era Rand McNally atlas on which I highlight the major roads I've driven or travelled in North America and I continue to update that (I just don't feel the need to buy an updated one). But when I'm driving I just prefer not to mess with a paper map, and my wife is not particularly good at reading them while we're in the car so I prefer having the sat-nav as a backup instead of asking her to look at a map!

My wife has a portable Garmin that is nice (I gave it to her after she got lost driving home from work once!), but I like the built-in device better.


Incidentally, going down a totally separate GPS-related avenue, I recently downloaded a pedometer app for my iPhone. It uses the GPS to track how far you've walked and it will draw a map to show you where you've been. I rather like that, not because I've needed it for directions but because it gives a good picture of where some of the local trails go and the like. We visited my parents on Sunday and I was telling them about a walking trail they ought to explore sometime and it was quite convenient just to pull out the pedometer app and show them the map it had made.

[agentsteel53]

I like having the "find nearest gas station" or "find nearest ATM" or whatever, especially if I'm on a more rural highway in an area I don't know.

I like this feature as well; I just need to tweak it sometimes so that the GPS tells me the nearest gas station going approximately forward.  If I have about 80 miles of gas left, I will take "go forward 50 miles" over "go back 30" any day.

[kkt]

You can pry my paper maps from my cold, dead fingers.

I don't have a vehicle GPS.  I have one for hiking, but I don't really trust it and I prefer my topo map and compass.  The GPS seems to be off by more than the specs say it should be off, and I haven't figured out why.  Plus the screen is hard to read outdoors, and way too small to get the big picture.

Paper maps are also nice historical snapshots.

[tdindy88]

Back to the original post, I always liked it that Ohio counties had maps for each county, and IIRC it was the state law to make one. I sure wish Indiana would do that, the best I can usually do is get a map through the Chamber of Commerce from the main county seat. I have made it a goal to get one from each county, and luckly have gotten most of them. One county I was in recently, for Warrick County, I have a map for, but I was trying to get one that was updated. Unfortunently the chamber there stopped making maps, now you can access one online. Made me sick.

[kphoger]

When I was growing up in Rawlins County, Kansas, my dad was a pastor of two congregations–one in town and one in the country.  Back then, the rural roads were not named at all.  The pastor before him had developed a database of church members and how to get to their farms.  It would go like this:  3W2N1W, which would mean 3 miles west, then 2 miles north, then 1 mile west.  Well, my dad was able to obtain a poster-sized map of the county from the courthouse, with every farm labeled by surname.  You could just go up to the wall, skim the area the family lived in, and figure out your own route.  Beat that, GPS!

[agentsteel53]

You could just go up to the wall, skim the area the family lived in, and figure out your own route.  Beat that, GPS!

how would you know, a priori, where to skim?

without a GPS, or a map index, I wouldn't know the faintest way to get to the Johnson ranch because I don't even know where the Johnson ranch is.

I'm not gonna stare at a map for hours, scouring grid square by grid square, as though it were some kind of a word search.

[hobsini2]

Kurumi, you're not kidding. Couple years ago my brother and I drove his family and me in 2 cars from suburban Chicago to Virginia. (Keep in mind that he has a bigger lead foot than I but he was following me.) All was good until we got near Elkins WV.  Somehow in the mountains along US 33, he got lost even though I told him that we are staying on 33 the whole way.  When daylight broke at the VA/WV border, I pulled over to wait for him before getting into Harrisonburg.  My neice and I waited almost 45 minutes before he finally showed up. Thank god for the Waffle House in Harrisonburg so I could calm down and not scream at him for being an idiot.

this must've been before cell phones.  I'd done that a few times too... and we always made a backup plan of "find us at such and such a landmark in this town".  If it was a town we'd never been to, it was the post office, as we figured it would be easy to find with local help.  luckily it never came to that.

Actually we both had cell phones but cell coverage sucks in the mountains of eastern West Virginia.

[triplemultiplex]

I will continue using real maps as long as I have a pulse.  GPS tells you how to get to a location.  That's it.  Oh sure, it can find you the nearest Scarf 'n Barf in Podunk, USA, and prevent one from getting lost in an unfamiliar town, but it doesn't give you a feel for the area at all.  There's no way to zoom out without loosing resolution.  With a map, I can discover interesting places to check out that are sort of on the way.  GPS can't do that.  It doesn't know what features I might find interesting.  It'll tell me where all the parks are within a 10 mile radius, for example, but it has no idea what kind of parks they are and if they're on a lake or stream or slapped up against a freeway.

With a map I can look at a town and see how it probably developed over the years.  It gives me a sense of what kind of place it is instead of just a web of crisscrossing lines.

Very important to me, If I find a mistake on a map, I can use my white out pen and collection of ball points to correct it.  When I find a mistake on my GPS, all I can do is curse at it and call its manufacturer an idiot.

I also have a huge problem with some of the routes the GPS thinks I should take.  Those algorithms do not apparently exist in a world where Milwaukee has Lincoln Memorial Drive on the lakefront.  And Garmin seems to think that "BR US 51" is spoken as "US 51 Branch".

Oh, and maps never run out of batteries or have problems finding satellites.

[on_wisconsin]

Why is this in the Midwest sub-fourm?

[Hot Rod Hootenanny]

Why is this in the Midwest sub-fourm?

Because the thread originated with an article in an Ohio newspaper and centered on Ohio's map industry.
What does Wisconsin have?

[NE2]

Nobody actually reads the articles. We just respond to the title.