[Talk-GB] New map style

[Mark Goodge]

On 01/11/2015 07:22, Ed Loach wrote:
>
> On 31 Oct 2015 21:59, "jonathan" <jonathan at bigfatfrog67.me
> <mailto:jonathan at bigfatfrog67.me>> wrote:
>  >
>  > I don't like it.
>  >
>  > It very simple, the colours should match the road sign colours: Blue,
> Green, Red!
>
> Red?

Traditional UK mapping colours for roads are a bit more complex than 
that. When the OS first started using colour, back in the early 20th 
century, it chose red for A roads and orange for B and larger 
unclassified roads, with white for residential streets and rural tracks. 
The use of green for primary routes and blue for motorways (and yellow 
for tertiary routes) came quite a bit later. The earliest OS maps to 
feature motorways have them in red, and practically indistinguishable 
from A roads - just about the only clue is the presence of slip roads at 
junctions. Here's a very early stretch of the M1 and M10:

http://maps.nls.uk/geo/explore/#zoom=14&lat=51.7518&lon=-0.4195&layers=11

The first UK maps to use blue for motorways were wide-scale route 
planner maps published in the late 60s. Most UK mapping companies 
quickly followed suit and it became the generic default. But it wasn't 
until the 90s that green for primary routes became anything like a standard.

Green and blue do, of course, match the relevant signage. But the other 
standard colours don't, and never have (other than in the trivial sense 
that minor road signs are white, and so are the lowest category of roads 
on pretty much every mapping system).

The use of blue for motorways by the OS was actually quite controversial 
at the time! Many people felt that blue should be reserved for water 
features, and that applying it to roads would be too confusing.

Mark