I sent them an email to fix it and they have, but last spring I wanted to get from my place to Darwin, MN. Yahoo/Mapquest sent me SW to St. Cloud first, SE to Minnapolis second, then straight west to Darwin. 150 miles total.
Darwin is less than an hour directly south of St. Cloud.
I’ve never had a probel with MapQuest, although I remember it being a lot better than it is currently.
I also remember – though this might not be MapQuest of which I speak – being able to choose options that avoid toll highways.
And somewhere I used to have a bookmark for a site that would provide updates on highway construction and the location of regular speed traps along a proposed route. (Don’t have it anymore, since it was on the computer at my former job… bummer.)
What version did you have? I have the 2000 version, and it has Stevens Pass, and the route it gives for Mukilteo to Clinton is Washington 525 - which is the ferry that goes straight there.
I never use the directions on Mapquest, just the maps. The driving directions are usually logically screwy and will send you on a willy-nilly route rather than the most direct one. They also get mileages wrong and things like exit numbers. Can be very annoying. Don’t trust 'em.
I have to admit that the directions from Havre De Grace, Md. to Toronto were spot on, however. You have to go over a lot of secondary highways thru western Pa. ( there isn’t any beter way ), it nailed every one of them, spot on. A 500+ Mile trip and they got it right.
My directions have been mostly accurate so far, but I only use them for city to city driving. In-town I get them, but double-check em with a current road map.
I searched on directions to a friend’s new house. Not bothering to check them :smack:, I printed them out and left. So that was my fault. Anyway, it occurred to me when I was a few minutes away that the directions just ended on a semi-major street. I kept going because I didn’t want to make the half-hour trek home, and I stopped roughly where the directions showed on the map. I hadn’t realized his property backed up to that street. Anyway, I parked in the shoulder and walked over the little hill and through someone’s property to get to his street and found his house from there.
I put in directions from a western suburb of Ft. Laud. to Boynton Beach, FL, and clicked on “avoid highways” (I had been in an accident recently and wasn’t ready to do that again). The directions NOT ONLY told me I should take two interstates, but told me to drive out to the middle of the state, then go north along Lake Okeechobee and head back east. A total of over four hours. When taking 1-95 North would have taken probably under an hour. Fortunately, I learned from example #1 and checked the directions before I left. I just made my own route.
I once Mapquested a route from Lake Jackson, TX to the Rio Grande Valley. It had me (1) Going 50 miles northwest into Houston before heading south, and (2) Going into Mexico before turning around and going back north to my destination.
You know, all of you would be better off buying a Rand McNalley USA Road Atlas for about $20.00 and leaving the free computer crapmaps alone. There are NO computer mapping websites/programs that are as accurate as a good $3.00 map made up by a local cartographer - not MapQuest, not Delorme, not even Rand McNalley.
Maps are definitely one item where paper is always better than computer.
I think my best mapquest story involved it telling me to drive through the site where they were building the new home for the Oscars ceremony to get to a hotel in Hollywood. Apparently, nobody told Mapquest that that road hadn’t gone all the way through for a couple of years now.
Other than that, it’s just been a matter of convincing Mapquest that taking the 101 through downtown LA during rush hour is not something that should happen if it can be avoided.
I’m not too sure what the difficulty is… you take 222 up to Lancaster and then 283 to Harrisburg, and then 15 all the way up to Corning, NY. Voila! Only 3 roads to get you through the entirety of Central Pennsylvania and, from what I see, not a toll among them (though you’ll likely have to pay a toll to leave your town headed east on 40, but you know that I’m sure). I understand that there is some construction on 15, but not so much as to render the path worthless.
From there you take 17/390 up to the Turnpike (US 90) and etc.
I’ve found my destinations using Mapquest…however, they seem to be a little confused when it comes to compass directions.
I get directions like “Take 125 Northeast to route 9 East.” I don’t know about where the people in Mapquest are from, but I can go North on 125 or East on 125, not both. I suppose 125 north my bear East a little, but :rolleyes:
I tried my house to work. The first part matched the exact route I take. Then it said to pass the exit to Hamilton Rd. (the road I work on), go three exits down to Brice Rd., get back on the highway, and double back to Hamilton Rd.
The directions from work to home had me driving through both downtown and campus at rush hour.
I love mapquest ( :rolleyes: ), I used to think that some of it’s errors were deliberate as a way of preventing copyright infringement (You know, putting fake roads on a map so that if someone else decides to print it, you can nail 'em.), but I began getting them every time I used it that I realized the site’s screwy. For example, no matter where I plan to go, it always tells me to turn right at the driveway of my trailer park, thus forcing me to go through three or more lights than I would if I simply turned left at the driveway. Another thing that I have found is that it has favorite routes it likes to send you on, even if another route is shorter. If I’m trying to get to some place I’ve never been before via mapquest, I just use it as a rough guide to get me into the general area. Nine times out of ten, once I get to where it is I’m going, I realize that I know a much better and faster way of getting there than mapquest does.