I know there are sites that will map a driving route between several points (like mapquest). Are there any sites that will map a route that I choose? I’m driving to Cleveland tomorrow, and I’m interested to see what mapquest says vs. my actual route (directions from my friend).
I don’t trust these. Last week, I did a trip that always takes 9.5 hours. I asked Street Atlas how long it would take, and it told me 12.5 hours.
I put in an alternate route that I was interested in, and it told me 14.5 hours. I drove it anyway, and it actually took less than 9.5 hours. And I don’t drive fast - I never have to worry about the highway patrol because I always drive slowly enough that I won’t get a ticket. The methods these use to figure the time are just screwed up - you can’t even use them to compare two routes, they’re so far off.
If you belong to AAA, they’ll do it for you - they give you a neat TripTik thingy.
I don’t know of any such site that will map your own route. Mapquest is usually pretty good about driving time; it’s spot on if you drive the speed limit. Usually mapquest will not differ from common-sense directions except at the endpoints of your trip. If the differences are major, try the “avoid highways” or “shortest route” tabs.
I’ve just been going through the same thing trying to map the trip I’m taking tomorrow. I haven’t found a way that will let you pick your route directly, but you can sort of force the mapping sites to do it…
Mapquest and randmcnally.com both have “Road Trip planners” that let you pick a start point, an end point, and various stops along the way. So instead of asking for directions directly from Central NJ to Cooperstown, NY I went to the road trip planner and said:
Home to Kingston, NY
Kinston, NY to Stony Hollw, NY
Stony Hollw to Brodhead
Brodhead to Fleischmanns
Fleischmanns to Andes
Andes to Oneonta
Oneonta to Cooperstown.
And this forced the route to closely follow the scenic route I want to take. That way, their estimates for distance and time are much closer than if I just let it select the route.
Now I don’t want to see any of you guys stalking me tomorrow…
And feel free to sprinkle various vowels over that last post so as to correct all the typos.
I use the driving directions at Yahoo Maps all the time.
http://maps.yahoo.com/py/ddResults.py
You need to a sanity check. That is, sometimes, it doesn’t recognize the specific location so it gives you directions to “city center” which can be misleading.
Also, there may be more efficient routes, but it’s a good start.
I just tried my trip on the MapQuest trip planner. Richardson, TX to Ruidoso, NM, passing through Aspermont, TX. I actually drove it in under 9.5 hours, all on major highways, driving close to the speed limit.
MapQuest said it would take 17.5 hours, on some tortuous route.
Yahoo Maps told me 9 hours on the route it recommended, but I couldn’t find any feature to try out a different route.
Maps On Us will allow you to “play” with the route.
It requires registration (but then keeps your trips in memory for future access).
I will not claim that it is really great. It gives you a choice of “most direct,” “fastest,” “favor major highways” or “avoid major highways” and some other options.
If you know specific points on your route, you can specify those points, which forces it to follow your intended route. This method should work, but it has a habit of not being able to “find” your intermediate points. (If you are driving from Lancaster, OH to Cleveland and you put in two streets in Zanesville, it is liable to find two similar streets in Columbus or Westerville–which is the route it thinks you ought to be using.)
It might be worth a try if you do not have a really complicated route in mind and have some patience to play with it.