Let’s Get County Lines Drawn on Google Street View

Comments

12 responses to “Let’s Get County Lines Drawn on Google Street View”

1. 

   Mike Lowe

   February 10, 2010

   I made the suggestion to Google. I too have had to have Mapquest open in another browser tab along with Google and http://www.mob-rule.com. I sometimes use my copy of Microsoft Streets and Trips for county boundary knowledge if I’m at home.

   I haven’t been called an oddball in a while. thanks! 🙂

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2. 

   Mark Sundstrom

   February 10, 2010

   I also made the suggestion. Bing maps, which I’ve been experimenting with more lately, also shows county boundaries and names.

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3. 

   Matthew Prull

   February 10, 2010

   I did my part!

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4. 

   Greg

   February 10, 2010

   I’ll try to do it from about 20 different computers tomorrow, when I’ll be around them. The gas-and-toll-cost suggestion is intriguing too.

   Also, completely randomly: I noticed on Street View a stop sign in Italy, on the border with San Marino, in English. I’ve never been to Italy, so maybe all traffic signs there are in English for some reason. I don’t know how one embeds maps in comments, so here’s the tinyurl: http://tinyurl.com/italystop .

   Finally: are there any border crossings in Street View wherein traffic switches sides of the road? I can’t think of any, but it would be interesting to find.

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   1. 

      Twelve Mile Circle

      February 11, 2010

      I seemed to recall from driving I’ve done in Western Europe that they’ve standardized on the English-language “Stop” sign. I checked Wikipedia — which has a page devoted entirely to Stop signs amazingly enough — and confirmed that suspicion. There are some interesting local variations on that page, too.

      WordPress has a quirk that doesn’t allow a user to embed Google Maps / Street View into a comment. Oddly, it does allow a user to do this when editing an existing comment. Unfortunately you can’t do that because you can’t sign-in to the Admin pages for this blog. However, I can. So what I usually do is drop the appropriate script into user comments moments after I approve them. When you provide your original comment, feel free to drop in the script (which you’ve copied-and-pasted from the Link option at the top-right side of the Google Map) into what you post. Then, I’ll use that to fix it, like I’ve done for your comment above.

      Oh, no Street View that I know of where driving directions change at a border. Most of those happen in pretty remote and lightly traveled areas of Africa if I recall. Anecdotally, I hear it’s a rather mundane affair: There’s either a stop or a yield where the traffic switches sides and they then go on their merry way.

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      1. 

         Ryan

         June 9, 2011

         Here is an example of a road side switch in an urban setting at the China/Macau border. Unfortunately, there is no Street View, but you have to admit it is a more elaborate solution than a stop or yield sign.

         Also notable is a registration problem at the border: if you switch to the map view, the roads don’t connect.

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5. 

   Mike Lowe

   February 11, 2010

   I have looked at Bing maps. The county lines disappear quickly as I zoom out. Mapquest keeps them visible longer as I zoom out. However, Mapquest views are narrower vertically to make room for ads.

   The mob-rule website has an application that imposes county lines on a Google map. I used that often to make my colored visited-county map.

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6. 

   Zach

   March 23, 2010

   I just noticed today – Google Maps displays county borders for Ireland (though not for Northern Ireland or the rest of the UK). Indication of progress implementing the county layer?

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   1. 

      graham

      September 24, 2010

      Google shows the Irish counties because it shows the top-level subdivision, which in a small totally unitary state like Ireland means counties, in federal, quasi-federal or semi-quasi-federal countries (e.g. US, Spain, UK, respectively), it shows the states, autonomous nations etc, with the counties or equivalents that they are composed of not shown. It’s noticeably incongruous at a border like the UK-Ireland one.

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7. 

   Brian

   January 26, 2011

   Zach/Graham, you mention that Google maps shows counties for Ireland, but not as far as I can see – it does show provincial borders (between Leinster/Munster/Connaught/Ulster), but not down to county level – which is very frustrating.
   Was this working previously and been switched off since?

   Mapquest is no better.

   Bing does show county maps – so I’ll be using this.

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8. 

   Fritz Keppler

   April 20, 2011

   I am also disappointed at the online mapping services which do not include US county lines. Bing still shows them, but they have been deemphasized and are less easy to see than they were, say, last year, and the county names have disappeared on the maps, though still visible on the aerial photos. Even though I have major problems with some apparent errors on their maps, MapQuest still shows the lines most clearly, with names on both sides of the lines, especially in the aerial photos.

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9. 

   Patrick Harrington

   September 26, 2011

   I did my bit 🙂

   Wiki have UK borders but simply as a static map in wiki commons

   http://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special%3ASearch&search=UK+county+maps

   but these are simply .png files so not very useful.

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