So I wanted to see how many miles it was to drive to Muskegon, Michigan from Milwaukee and Google Maps tells me to take a boat across Lake Michigan and even has a line across the lake for the route. :rolleyes:
So why the hell does it do this?
Maybe it expects you to take the ferry?
The boatman must get his coin.
If you zoom out, grab the blue driving directions line, and then pull the white dot in the center over Gary, it will change the directions to what you’re looking for. Here’s the result:
eta: tried to link to the directions but couldn’t. Anyway, the default directions are the fastest at 3 hours and 25 minutes, whereas going through Gary takes 5 hours and 3 minutes. If you want to be extra stupid and go North, it will take 11 hours and 39 minutes.
Click options and set “avoid tolls”. It won’t put you on the ferry, and will give you its best route around the lake.
Some mapping software doesn’t seem to take into account large obstacles like lakes, at least for the “nearest distance” calculation. If you live on a peninsula, this can make computer routing useless, or at the very best, inaccurate.
Idle curiosity made me research this a bit. The Ferry seems to cost about $100 to cross with your car, which is rather a big “toll”. If there were very many areas of the country where car ferries were an option, a “no ferries” choice might be reasonable, while still allowing it to route you on toll roads and across toll bridges.
Can I avoid bridges by saying no trolls?
Which isn’t the case here, because there is definitely an auto ferry it intends you to take. And these days, I don’t see mapping software routing you where there’s literally no road, and never has been. Idiotic suggestions from mapping software abound, but they usually involve out of date data, lack of local knowledge, or really intricate multi-turn suggestions it thinks are two minutes shorter than the simpler route.
No, that setting just filters out YouTube hits.
That deserves a gruff response.
Ballpark it costs 50 cents per mile to operate an automobile. If the $100 toll saves you 200 miles of driving it’s profitable on that point alone before considering the monetary value of your time.
The OP’s ferry saves at least 90 minutes of driving, and perhaps a bunch more. I didn’t bother Googling up the route.
I’m pretty sure the ferry is an economic winner if you value your driving time at minimum wage. Certainly it will be if you value your time at $20/hr or more.
Because it’s the shortest route.
For the curious, here’s a link to what the OP describes.
If you click on “show options” (above the “Get Directions” button) and check "avoid tolls, you get this long drive around the lake instead.
If you say “no trolls,” you can’t go to Muskegon. According to folks in the Upper Peninsula, everyone on the Lower Peninsula is a troll because they live below the (Mackinac) Bridge.
The handling of ferries in routing algorithms is tricky. There are many places which can only be reached by ferry. There are also many places for which a ferry provides a tremendous shortcut. So it is often a mistake to ignore them completely. On the other hand most drivers would go out of their way to avoid a ferry if they possibly could: They are sometimes expensive, and you might have to wait a while for the next one at the dock, depending on how frequent they are.
I’ve not seen a solution to this problem that works for everybody, in all circumstances.
Try mapping San Francisco to Tokyo (here, I did it for you).
The important step: “28. Kayak across the Pacific Ocean.”
For a while, directions from New York to London included swimming across the Atlantic.
It’s actually pretty good about picking ferries if they are genuinely the shortest route. Here’s a Puget Sound example of same: http://maps.google.com/maps?saddr=poulsbo,+wa&daddr=Bellevue,+WA&hl=en&ll=47.690352,-122.430267&spn=0.598091,1.098633&sll=47.761484,-122.379456&sspn=1.194541,2.197266&geocode=FXhk2AId94-w-CmDZSYsTSKQVDFJsNciUt4YPg%3BFQl61gIdmV23-ClBYKajz2uQVDFlB9DqglTPug&vpsrc=6&mra=ls&t=h&z=10
Why does it have you drive up to Seattle first?
Um, more favorable currents? 
I’m guessing it’s a little joke inserted by a developer. The “kayak” part of the trip has to be defined with a beginning and end point, and they didn’t want to define mutiple routes across. Maybe the person who added it is from Seattle.
Also, by taking the ferry, you can avoid Illinois, which, in my experience, is something many Wisconsinites consider advantageous. The schedule isn’t so good, though, you can only leave at 6:00 am and 12:30 pm. So there’s that. It costs $116.50, which is a bit steep, but that’s a lot of gas you’re not burning, either.
I think that’s just for the car - they also charge for each person.
Here’s the cost of one person & one car, one way from Milwaukee to Muskegon:
100.50 - one car
95.00 - one person
12.00 - port & security fees
20.00 - fuel surcharge
$227.50 - total cost