
A Map That Made Los Angeles Make Sense - pseudolus
https://www.citylab.com/life/2019/08/thomas-guide-los-angeles-history-street-map-google-waze-app/591721/
======
jedberg
Wow, reading this made me realize how not-unique my experience was. I too
learned to read a Thomas Map long before I could drive. I too helped navigate
from the back seat (and then the front seat). I too knew what Thomas page my
house was on, and my grandparents, and my school, etc. And in fact, I too rode
in the back of a Mitsubishi Galant!

I also agree with the author -- people today are losing their spacial sense of
the geography around them. With mapping apps they no longer get the greater
context. There's nothing like a huge map that's 48 inches in each direction
that gives you both granular detail as well as an overall picture.

You can't get that from an app. You either have detail or you zoom way out.

When I bought my first car in 1999, the very first thing I did was buy an SF
Bay Area Thomas Guide and study it. I knew that I was going to be driving in
the Bay Area I better learn all the major streets and freeways. I don't think
new drivers today do that. They just rely on apps.

To be fair, I too _usually_ rely on apps, but it's my extra knowledge that
allows me to use the map app as a tool to enhance my driving, instead of as a
crutch necessary to get around.

~~~
scott_s
> When I bought my first car in 1999, the very first thing I did was buy an SF
> Bay Area Thomas Guide and study it. I knew that I was going to be driving in
> the Bay Area I better learn all the major streets and freeways. I don't
> think new drivers today do that. They just rely on apps.

I don't think most _old_ drivers did that. I didn't. I got my license in 1997.
I don't recall ever looking at a map for where I grew up (Norther Virginia, DC
suburbs). I navigated based on memory, landmarks and street signs learned from
watching my parents drive.

I didn't start looking at maps until I moved to places I did not intuitively
know. Consequently, I had a much better understanding of basic geography in
those places than I did where I grew up. Since I imagine more people were like
me than like you, I'm willing to bet that with the advent of smarthpones with
map apps, more people have better geographic knowledge of the places they are
in, not less.

~~~
bdowling
> I don't think most old drivers did that. I didn't.

It may have been regional. In Los Angeles, where I was in high school in he
early 1990s, literally every kid I knew with a car had a Thomas Guide.

When standalone GPS units appeared (e.g., TomTom, Garmin), I wondered why
there wasn’t a Thomas Guide brand GPS, because Thomas Guide was the dominant
brand for the thing that helped you get around LA. If Thomas Guide was only a
regional success, that would explain why that never happened.

~~~
jboles
I think it’s one of those things you learn from your parents by riding in the
car with them, and the relative age one starts driving vs moving far from
their childhood home.

I did both - learning names of roads, landmarks and routes from the back seat,
then later studying their Gregory’s (Sydney street directory), more than my
parents ever did, and navigating for them from the back seat.

To this day some of my friends think I’m some crazy human GPS for being able
to remember how to get somewhere after traveling there only once, sometimes
10+ years earlier.

~~~
bdowling
Yes, I learned my way around that way as well. The Thomas Guide was for
getting to new places I hadn't been, or finding an efficient route home.

------
zach
When I started a real estate startup, it was because I had gotten the wall
version of the Thomas Bros. map — of course! — and plotted LA’s median home
prices, crime and school stats.

My idea was, wow, wouldn’t it be great to give other people this kind of
expansive knowledge about Los Angeles? If they could only understand what I
see on this map!

But of course, it’s not necessary to understand the entirety of a map if you
have a tool that zeroes in on what you really want. Google doesn’t exist for
you to understand the whole web, but to mine it precisely. Finding a home is
hard to do the same way, but giving people a zeitgeist is always inferior to
giving them a tool that lets them understand the _least_ about something. It’s
a hard lesson for an infovore to learn, I’ll say that.

So, of course, now LA drivers know too much, while they themselves know very
little. In the 2000s there were “hidden shortcuts” and alternate routes that
were risky. Now, the risk is hedged and nothing is hidden. It is a marketplace
of nearly perfect information, where saving a minute of someone’s life in
traffic is treated with the respect it actually deserves.

Yet now the big problem is that people have locked in their commute route
years ago, and it gets slower and slower with no escape. They drive from their
far-away apartment, guided by synthesized voices, past the landed aristocracy
of Los Angeles with the favor of Prop. 13 whose lawn signs chide land-use
refugees to drive like their non-existent kids lived there.

Ultimately, the era of broad knowledge was also an era of choice. Both are
leaving us at the same velocity. There is little need for a giant book of
colleges when you can’t get into or afford the ones you’re interested in. Who
cares about a directory of reviewed doctors when your crummy insurance will
not let you see any of the ones you would choose? The time of the Thomas Bros.
map was before the closing of the urban frontier. Now, you just take the only
thing on the shelf.

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amiantos
I hadn’t heard that NIMBY’s are also NOMS (not on my streets) but it doesn’t
surprise me they’re trying to keep cars from driving down the public streets
they live on. Is there anything the affluent won’t do to try to exclude
themselves from society at large?

I recently started motorcycling and don’t want a phone mount to distract
myself while driving. This has turned Maps apps into a “Thomas guide” for me.
I examine the maps and chart the route of my ride the night before, memorizing
which turns I want to take and surrounding streets in case I miss a turn. Of
course, if I do get lost I can open my digital “Thomas guide” back up and
figure out where I am. It has given me a different level of confidence in my
ability to navigate that simply relying on GPS routing for the past 15 years
has. But it’s hard to get lost in the West LA area, there’s so many major
streets that are memorable and as long as you know what cardinal directions
they run in, it’s not really a big deal. If you just drive in one direction
long enough you’re bound to find something that orients you in space.

~~~
wpietri
I'm quite happy to bash the rich, but I think they have a legitimate concern
here. Freeways are for long-distance travel past areas. Surface streets are
for local travel in the area. When Google Maps tries to throw me onto surface
streets, I mostly don't let it do it, because I think a bunch of people
zooming through somebody's neighborhood is rude and often dangerous.

~~~
jayd16
Its more efficient overall to use the available roads. As an LA native, taking
the surface streets is a way of life.

~~~
nicoburns
More efficient for drivers. But it results in much less efficient land use
overall, because more space is now taken up by cars.

~~~
DangitBobby
Then they should be interested in making the overuse of cars "less of a
problem" instead of "not my problem".

~~~
wpietri
I mean, on HN the solution to badly considered comments is to grumpily reply
to them, not to work to solve the societal problem of poor education in
critical thinking. So I don't think we can really expect much more of others.

~~~
DangitBobby
Sure, we can't all think big picture all the time. That's part of what
discussion is for. And even if it's okay to be narrow minded or flat out wrong
on occasion, we are well within our rights to try to adjust people's mindset
if we are so inclined. Even if somewhat grumpily.

------
wpietri
A big problem I have with things like Google Maps is how it turns me into a
peripheral of the system. As the author points out, it not only doesn't expect
me to know anything, it avoids educating me on anything.

Now if I'm going anywhere I don't know well, I try to take some time and at
least look around the map as I would with a paper map, so that I can
contextualize things. And if possible, I'll use Google Earth to get a non-map
sense for position and visibility of landmarks. But I'd love to see Google
Maps work toward educating me as part of what it does.

~~~
crazygringo
Google Maps isn't _preventing_ you from using it or Earth to spend your own
time educating yourself. But sometimes you don't have time and you just need
to get from point A to B, or you'd just prefer to spend your limited time
educating yourself on other things rather than geography.

But I'm genuinely curious: what would Maps look like, for you, if it
"educated" you? You can already look at the route and pan/zoom around it to
understand it however much you want, and different zoom levels make it clear
what are major vs minor roads.

I'm struggling to imagine what automated "education" that comes along with
directions would _look_ like in some way that could be scalable/automated and
interesting to the general public? Is it a brief description of the endpoints
of each road, or tourist attractions or cities passed along the way, or
population levels, or the name of the mayor, or what?

~~~
giovannibajo1
For instance: “First, we need to take the I-10W”. “Ok I know this part”.
<stops giving directions>

~~~
exhilaration
But what if the route you normally take to I-10W has an accident and traffic
is backed up for miles? in my experience, it's always valuable to keep Google
maps running all the time so you're aware of slow downs long before you hit
them.

~~~
giovannibajo1
Well, in that case, Google Maps would wake up and suggest an alternative
route.

The point I'm trying to make is that Google Maps (actually, all navigators) is
biased towards shutting the brain down and just focusing on next turn. It
could do much better in describing the overall route, and even letting you
drive by yourselves parts of the route you already know -- it can still tell
you to do alternates routes if there's traffic though.

Obviously the workaround is to skim the overall route and decide by yourself
what to do, whether to follow directions or not on certain parts. This is what
I always do -- just because I want to make sure that I still know my way
without a navigator and it's also a good way to learn new parts of the city
(or new cities) that you don't know. At the same time, Google Maps isn't
really helping on this.

~~~
wpietri
Yes, exactly. The problem is the brain-shutting-down part. It treats you as a
dumb peripheral. But we know that learning doesn't happen best that way. [1] I
would love to see it be more helpful in the ways you suggest.

[1] E.g.,
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spaced_repetition](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spaced_repetition)

------
leggomylibro
>I don’t know of any equivalent street atlas that exists for the half-million
L.A. households that use buses, trains, and bikes to get around instead of
cars.

Google Maps already does this; there are 'public transit', 'walking', and
'biking' directions. The public transit option gives you a few different
options, including transfers and how late the buses are if the city provides
that data. There's a dedicated 'transit' overlay which traces major routes and
adds bus stops to the map.

It's great if you weren't aware of nearby express routes or need to get
somewhere at odd hours, but I guess it does also increase bus congestion by
funneling more people into the bus routes. It stinks not always getting a
seat, maybe I should sue Google.

~~~
egypturnash
I believe the author was talking about her not knowing of any atlases for non-
driving LA residents _from the days before ubiquitous smartphones with GPS_.

I didn’t drive during the decade I lived in LA, and I _still_ had a Thomas
Guide. Supplemented with bus route maps and the county’s route planning
website, but the Guide was definitely still earning the space it took up in my
backpack.

------
zonidjan
Ah, yes. The old "I have more right to this road than you" argument.

The apps don't increase congestion, piss-poor infrastructure does. Apps spread
it out.

~~~
SECProto
> The old "I have more right to this road than you" argument.

The argument that motorists have used for decades to claim that they have sole
right to use the asphalt to drive fast and park their cars, and everyone else
(cyclists, pedestrians, "sunday drivers", etc...) have to get out of their
way.

------
kurthr
A big key to driving in LA is recognizing and knowing where the
mountains/buildings are. With that GPS and compass aren't required to have a
very good feel for where you are and are headed. You still need to know
streets (and which go through, have lights, traffic), but it's very reasonable
to know which way to get to a major street/highway even from an "unknown"
location.

~~~
danidiaz
Kevin Lynch notes as much in "The Image of the City", his book about urban
form:

> Paths proved to be the dominant element [of orientation] in terms of
> quantity [...] The single exception was the shift in attention from paths
> and edges to landmarks, which was noted in Los Angeles. This was an striking
> change for an automobile-oriented city, but it may perhaps have been due to
> the lack of differentiation in the gridiron streets.

------
Aloha
I owned a Thomas Guide before I owned a car, it honestly greatly expanded my
spacial awareness, even now, I can drive thru the LA basin and not get lost,
even though I've not lived there in almost 15 years.

The issue with GPS is you dont internalize the routings and learn the ability
to generate your own routings over time.

~~~
an_account
I disagree. If you pay attention to where you’re being routed you can totally
learn special awareness and routing in your city. Some people don’t, but those
are the same type of people that were always lost in the age of paper maps.

------
c3534l
I have noticed that younger uber drivers trust their apps even to do
incredibly stupid things like: make a massive loop over a bridge to turn
around and go back to where they came when they were already parked on a two-
way street with no traffic in front of my apartment building. Older people
will actually listen to me when I tell them they should ignore the app.
Younger people get upset at the very suggestion, like not following the app is
dangerous or against the law or something.

~~~
EliRivers
I think the apps don't help themselves; if it said something along the lines
of "You need to turn around - you can do so safely by <making a massive loop
over a bridge>" this would inform people of the need to turn around _and_ tell
them how to do so in the event that they cannot do so safely simply by
throwing a handbrake turn at speed this very second.

As it is, they sometimes even obscure the fact that they're guiding the user
to turn around. I've definitely found myself guided to turn around via an
awkward route in the past and found myself surprised when I realised that's
what the game was.

~~~
blaisio
This, so much! I'm continually shocked by how bad the UX is in GPS apps in
2019.

------
DrScump
In the Bay Area, there was an even more detailed, local binder-style map
producer -- Barclay Maps, perhaps? They were the best for ongoing local
navigation, popular with salesfolk and Realtors alike.

Later, when I did voter data and precinct boundaries for some campaigns; they
provided detail others did not.

I just tossed out what may have been my last set of Thomas Bros maps a couple
of months ago. I couldn't envision a legitimate need, but it hurt to just toss
them.

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gpsx
Maybe this is what progress looks like...

I think the reason people learned much more about the geography before was
because it was a byproduct of doing the work needed to get around. Those
Thomas guides weren't easy. Of course, I like that kind of thing. Not everyone
wants to spend mental energy on this.

I have thought about, without success, how to make a mapping app that would be
good for someone who liked to think about where they were going.

------
mark-r
I always assumed every metro area would have something like this. In
Minneapolis it was the Hudson's map book: [http://hudsonmap.com/hudsons-twin-
cities-steet-atlas.html](http://hudsonmap.com/hudsons-twin-cities-steet-
atlas.html)

I too lament the lack of the big picture that comes with Google maps.

------
joshuaheard
My wife and I were chuckling the other day about using the Thomas Bros map of
old, while plugging our destination into the car's GPS nav system. Something
else my kids will never know about.

~~~
hestipod
I get really stressed out driving without knowing the area/route ahead of
time. With so much poor city planning out there, whenever I wing it I tend to
end up in dead ends or winding cul-de-sac heavy areas where you can see where
you need to be across a few feet of someone's yard. I've never really adapted
to using phone/gps nav either for some reason as it feels so distracting and
myopic. I still only use GMaps etc for preplanning. Give me a paper map and
orientation to major streets any day.

------
watersb
Thomas Brothers Guide, San Diego 1986. Otherwise I was doomed.

