I need to give someone directions, and neither Google nor Bing Maps want to give me consistent results. Also, I find they break the route up a bit illogically. Mapuest, as I recall, always wants me to download something, and right now I don’t have the time nor the patience. Can someone recommend a good, reliable map website whose directions are usually spot-on?
You can use Waze online to plot directions without downloading or using the app. It still includes user traffic data, and it will give you three options.
I can’t promise you it’s necessarily better than the other options, but it’s different.
Looks good, at first. It picks a few routes as options. But, when I select the desired route, I do not see the where / how to generate turn by turn directions! Your thoughts?
Michelin’s route planner is good, in my experience:
Really? We just had a friend from Vegas (and her husband and two kids) stay with us for a few days. Last Saturday she sent a group text to everyone she knows in western PA, giving our address: 123 kayaker lane Anytown, PA 15613.
She invited 10 people, one had prior plans, nine showed up with no difficulties using whatever GPS app they had on their phones. People need to be given “directions”?
In what way are the results inconsistent? At least for Google Maps, I thought it provided a “permalink” URL that shows you exactly the same route on repeated visits.
If there aren’t too many such problems, then in Google Maps you can always manually adjust the directions by dragging on the route to create a new waypoint. This will result in a new permalink URL that you can send.
Huh. It appears to have changed. It used to be you just clicked on any of the options and it switched to turn-by-turn directions, but I guess they removed that. Sorry.
AAA used to (and apparently still does) have those wonderful Triptiks, small spiral bound paper maps for members. Their website also offers online trip planning through their mobile app, though I’ve never used it. May be worth a look, especially if you happen to be a member.
god I miss ClassyGMap.
Is it just me ( my computer / my eyeballs / etc) or goes Google Maps have such shitty contrast that you can’t even see where the freaking roads are any more?
What I want from a map site:
•enter origin and destination, can accept crossroads when you don’t know the street address
• displays map of the route
•car, public trans, or walking as modes of travel
•lets you drag any portion of the route to a different path and it recalculates on-the-fly as you do
• you can clearly see the streets, cross streets (with their labels/names), and major landmarks
• lets you SAVE your route as an URL and open it later or email it etc
•satellite view
• add unlimited number of destinations/points and each one appears as a marker
•ideally, choices for the colors that it uses
• written directions / instructions with choice of simple (NY-25 east to Herricks Rd; turn right; continue onto Old Country Rd; turn left at Maple) or verbose (at intersection of Herricks, Rockaway, and Old Country Rd, continue to the left; slight left to stay on Old Country Rd…)
• printable directions that give option of not including the map
• printable map (resizes to fit paper size)
• runs on a goddam computer, doesn’t require a cellphone
Out of curiosity, which of those doesn’t Google Maps do? So far as I can tell, it does everything you say except maybe the markers aren’t as nice as you like them (it doesn’t show up as colored pins for me, but just a labeled destination point. But there are markers for your stops.) Streets look fine and identifiable to me, but I can see how it’s maybe a little hard to see.
Not yet mentioned in this thread is Here. I seldom use directions offered by online maps, so I can’t speak from experience, but it is now owned by a consortium of auto companies who purchased it to undergird their satnav and autonomous vehicle efforts. I do find it consistently has the most accurate streetnames in North America.
The fourth worldwide map database is OpenStreetMap, but its routing engine is still more-or-less in beta testing.
That’s still there for me, though they’ve made it drop down a bit more. I asked for directions, it gave me a few options, click on one and it gives more general directions. I asked for a two hour drive and it said go towards this town. Click on that and it gives turn by turn directions. You can even click on THAT and it showed a photo of the turn.
The one thing I don’t like that they’ve changed is it used to tell you how long it would take ‘normally’, but now it only says what it will take right now. I usually use it for future trips and want an estimate of how long it might take without traffic.
You can make your own Triptik online now. I’ve done it about half dozen times. It’s quite good.
Providing GPS coordinates sometimes provides better results on Google maps. Especially if you live in a new subdivision.
I use the App My GPS Location to get the coordinates. There’s a copy to clipboard option that makes it easy to paste the coordinates into an email.
That was my first thought too. Anyone with a smart phone has a perfectly serviceable GPS platform. Waze is a free app that works very well.
The part about being able to clearly see the streets. As in “at all”. The contrast is so awfully bad I can’t distinguish the streets from the non-street surrounding areas so it’s pretty much useless.
The part about being able to choose the colors that it uses. ClassyGMap gave me something like six different options. I think Google Maps originally did but they ripped all the nice stuff out.
Been awhile since I tried Google Maps for unlimited location “pins” but the last time I did so it didn’t keep the previous addresses when you added new ones. So you could not put in 75 addresses and end up with 75 pins displaying on your screen.
I also seem to recall that at some point Google Maps would no longer let you make more than a very limited number of drag-to-different-route changes (which inserts a midpoint “destination” at the drag point), whereas ClassyGmap had no limits that I ever encountered.
Specifically what site offers good printable maps? Google Maps used to years ago but now they are unreadable–at least on a black and white printer.
I don’t understand this part. Are talking about on your screen, or when you print it out, or what?
OK. I see being frustrated if you were used to a piece of software like ClassyGMap (which I am not familiar with myself) that gave you all those options. I admit, I didn’t try putting anywhere near 75 waypoints into Google maps. I think the most I’ve ever needed from a trip was four, possibly five. But if you just mean static pins, you can certainly put in 75 pins (I think–I have plenty of maps saved with at least several dozen pinned locations in them, and I have a Google Map I made with about 500 pins on them–and those you definitely can choose color–but that was through the API and I don’t know whether it works as well from the webpage. ETA: Actually, I checked, and you can absolutely create a map with pinned locations with different colors on the pins.
On my screen.