On 01/11/2015 07:22, Ed Loach wrote:
On 31 Oct 2015 21:59, "jonathan" <jonat...@bigfatfrog67.me
<mailto:jonat...@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
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