THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Tuesday, June 18, 1996 TAG: 9606180345
SECTION: LOCAL PAGE: B4 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: ASSOCIATED PRESS
DATELINE: ROANOKE LENGTH: 44 lines
Gov. George F. Allen, who is something of a map aficionado, thought it would be nice if the official Virginia highway map showed how mountainous the state is. Done, boss.
The state highway map released this week has everything the governor asked for - and more.
The Blue Ridge, Allegheny and Cumberland mountains appear to stand out in shades of gray and green in the new map. It's also bigger and easier to fold, a blessing for drivers with a glove compartment filled with badly creased maps.
``We had mountains before, back in the 60's, but not as realistic as these are,'' said Donna Purcell Mayes, assistant public affairs officer for the Virginia Department of Transportation.
The governor's suggestion echoed one of the findings of a 1993 transportation-department study of improving the state map.
Researchers interviewed the staff at state welcome centers and held six focus-group discussions with 60 people in Roanoke, Richmond and northern Virginia. They also interviewed 1,000 people who had been given state maps.
As a result of the research, the state made the following changes:
The map folds in half, rather than in thirds like the 1994-95 map. All groups interviewed found the ``single-fold'' map easier to handle.
It's 10 percent bigger and has more map inserts, which have been moved to the back of the map with the pictures of tourist attractions.
Welcome-center visitors, about two-thirds of them from out of state, said they wanted more inserts with more detail of cities and metropolitan areas to help them after they got off the interstate highways.
Among the new insert maps are those showing downtown Roanoke, downtown Norfolk, Staunton, Waynesboro, the Norton-Wise area, Front Royal and Leesburg, which is part of an expanded Northern Virginia insert.
The print on the map and its index is larger.
Through shading techniques, the new map shows elevations higher than 750 feet above sea level.
Williams & Heintz Map Corp. of Capitol Heights, Md., has printed an initial run of 3.75 million copies of the new state map at a cost to the state of $624,000. by CNB