I was listening to the news today talking about the elections in Syria and that Asaad and his wife voted in Damascus, which got me thinking about the distance between Jerusalem and Damascus, which was a common journey referred to in biblical times. The distance via crow-fly is only about 130 miles, which would have been a fairly long journey walking. But today in a car, should take you a couple of hours, but per Google Maps: it’s a 42 hour journey by car. If you look at the route provided by Google it’s about 1,644 miles. Why would google direct you this round about way, which would require you to go back through Egypt, take a ferry across the Red Sea, through Jordan and Iraq into Syria. I found this article, that explains that the borders of Israel, Syria and Lebanon are governed by UN peacekeeping troops and no one except those troops are permitted to cross at those borders. What a sad state of affairs the world has gotten to.
So, are there any other out of the way directions that google maps would take you to get to your destination that are more than 20 times your normal driving time?
Keep in mind that there is a civil war going on in Syria. And even before that, Israel was more-or-less at war with both Lebanon and Syria. A western tourist could travel between Tel Aviv and Damascus through Jordan fairly easily. However, Syria government’s control over border with Jordan is currently shaky at best.
It is possible in any meaningful sense to get permission to drive across North Korea? I know that NK has road and rail links to SK (from the Kaesong Industrial Region) and China, but I understand that all, or virtually all, foreigners are required to stay in certain places and/or travel only with official government escorts. Once across NK, all you would need would be Chinese and Russian visas, which aren’t terribly hard to get (tedious yes, but hard, no).
There’s a ferry from Busan, South Korea, to Fokuoka, Japan, but apparently it only takes foot passengers. Google Maps apparently does include water routes by car ferry, as between Singapore and Jakarta.
There are several ferries between Busan in South Korea and Japan. I’ve taken the fast one between Busan and Fukuoka (a three-hour trip), and it did only take passengers. There are also ferries between South Korea and China, and they probably don’t carry cars either. (Chinese, Japanese and Koreans are all used to catching public transport and taxis, so if they are travelling internationally, they’d be happy to leave their car at home.)
A few years back there was a huge ammonia leak at a nearby factory. They were evacuating everyone within a certain radius. I checked Google to see if my store was within that radius. Since I’m on the same street, it should have been fairly easy. However, instead of just giving me directions that said ‘Go straight X miles’ which is really what it should have been it said.
Go straight Y miles
Turn left, travel 2 miles
Get on freeway
Exit Freeway (on the street I started on)
Make a left turn
Travel Z miles (where Y+Z=X)
Step 1 and 6, alone, is all that were needed. To make it worse, there was no exit for that freeway, in that direction, on that street, so the directions aren’t even possible.
IOW, if the directions were possible, Google Maps turned a straight 1.5 mile drive into a screwy 2.5 mile drive.
I was surprised to find that Google Maps apparently won’t allow you to travel between India and Pakistan. I knew they were mutually hostile but not that road traffic wasn’t allowed (if this in fact is the case).
Straight line: 55 km
Shortest driving (but includes ferry): 5883 km
Second shortest (to answer the OP and takes the same ferry as shortest route): 13,571 km
I think there’s better than that between two cities in the same country. Ceuta and Algeciras are both cities in Spain, linked by a ferry. If you put them into Google Maps, the route between them is this ferry, and Google refuses to give you a route without a ferry. The shortest land route would include the Suez Canal Bridge and the Bosphorus Bridge, and would be about 12,000 km, but I think Google won’t give it because you can’t drive across the Sinai Peninsula.
It doesn’t have to be ferries, either. There are plenty of places where there is a continuous road, but Google Maps shows a gap at the border. For instance try the Egypt - Sudan border here:
If you switch to map view, there is a gap. When I tried this before, trying to get directions from one side of the border to a few hundred yards on the other side sent you on a huge loop through most of Africa. Now it just says it can’t calculate directions.
Apparently Google has modified it’s directions for traveling from Charleston, SC to Norfolk, VA. It used to be 439 miles driving through North Carolina, but they’ve now modified it to be 1,038 miles, driving from Charleston to Chattanooga, TN to Roanoke, VA to Norfolk, because until porn web viewing is restored to NC, why the hell would you want to go there?
I thought Miley Cyrus was from North Carolina but I guess she’s from Tennessee. Maybe Google thought the same thing and changed their maps accordingly.
When I visit my Dad, the directions it gives me from the airport to his apartment add 5 miles and wind around the downtown area instead of simply taking the 2 direct expressways.
The first lesson is that you should have an idea of a sensible route to take before you accept electronic navigation as “the correct way”.
The second lesson is that nationans publish maps of their transport networks and they aren’t don’t neccessarily use the same,or internally consistent calibrations, (basically , a calibration of a latitude/longitude location system… Basically France went ahead and calibrated their own model, without putting traditional “Greenwich” precisely at 0.000000… ), let alone ensure their road network map actually showed roads right up to (it would be better to go over…) the border of their lands accurately enough… eg they might consider the last 100 metres no mans land and the electronic navigator assumes its a dead end road…
Obviously we could repeat the same for crossing any country border (outside Western Europe and USA/Canada… ) and get many % failure…
Come back when you find that google says you can’t travel internally to that country 200 miles, to end points being marked roads within a mile of the end point you desire., but rather you must travel 1400 miles via other countries…
eg to go from Jerusalem to Demascus, how about you ask your electronic navigator to take you from Jerusalem to ,or near, the sensible crossing point… Then ask it to go from the appropriate place in Syria to Demascus…