Comparing the Cartography of Google Maps and Ask.com Maps Part 2

It's been awhile since I've posted. What can I say, after the ESRI dev summit I took a bit of a vacation, managing to squeeze in 3 days of surfing while in Southern California. If anyone's wondering, yes the water was cold... Last week I was busy with work, so here I am, what, two weeks since my last post?

Today I'll return to my comparison of Google Maps and Ask.com maps.

Ramp-age
Some of you are probably already guessing that I'm about to 'go-off' on cased line road symbology. More specifically, I'll examine the traditionally tricky challenge of symbolizing freeways and freeway ramps at multi-level interchanges.

Look at these screen captures of the interchange of I-25 and US-6 in Denver. Google Maps flat out does a better job with the representation of this intersection than Ask.com Maps.

1. Accurate Levels

Looking at the satellite imagery for the interersection, the Google map very accurately depicts how the ramps and main routes intersect, or don't. Google is accurate right down to whether or not a ramp/route passes over or under another ramp/route. Seriously, compare the sat with the map, they've done a really good job! The Ask map, well, if you were to believe their representation of the interchange, you'd have cars, lunch trucks, and vespa scooters crashing into each other at each intersection. There's no "level" at all in the Ask maps.

2. Smooth Connections

Another win for Google. The I-25/US-6 interchange is a good example of how you also need to know how to 'blend' symbology when different types of roads intersect, and these roads have different cased symbology. In this case, we have ramps thin, light-colored ramps, intersecting with thicker, darker-colored routes. The Google map does a quite fantastic job, breaks between colors are always a clean edge of a route/ramp, and routes always take preference over ramps. We don't see any 'round ends' of one color poking into another color. The Ask map is quite messy in comparison. Look at this screen capture of the I-25 Zuni St. on/off ramps from Ask for an example of these 'round ends'. Granted, a lot of the messiness in the Ask map derives from their mis-management of levels. Fix this problem, and Ask could be on par with Google for how this aspect of their cartography.

As an aside, one gripe that some cartographers might have with both maps is how dead-end roads are symbolized. Both maps use round end caps, whereas squared-off caps may be preferred. Here's an example from Google.

3. Directional Arrows

One thing that Google has that Ask doesn't are the tiny blue arrows indicating the direction of ramps and route lanes (you'll also see this for one-way streets). To me this is a clear representation, and also 'clearly' useful for following Google's directions, or making your own way on a detailed view of a Google map.

Talk to you soon,

-Cory

P.S - What I'm listening to: www.kexp.org (not to steal someone else's byline)