(no subject)

[desh]

Holy crap, MapQuest's new Beta page RULES. It's what map sites should be: You enter in destinations, as many as you want, reorder them however you want, and the directions are recalculated on the fly. And the best part: you can click "Avoid" to skip a road that you know sucks, and it will recalculate around that!

We learned in graph theory class in college that finding optimal directions between an ordered finite number of points is an easy problem to solve, even when you randomly remove routes, so I'm not surprised it happened eventually on a site. I was waiting for it. But now it's here, and it's awesome.

Let's try an example. I can never remember how to get to the Tappan Zee when driving to New England, and directions always take me over the GW. Let's say I want to print out Tappan Zee directions. So let's start with the basic directions from here to a city in New Hampshire...

5:54 over the GW upper level, as expected. Let's avoid that...

5:57 over the GW lower level. Okay, you got me. Let's avoid that...

6:00 through the Lincoln Tunnel? Yeah, right, maybe at 3am. Let's avoid that...

6:02 through the Holland Tunnel? I'm skeptical, but I've never actually tried it. Let's avoid that...

6:00 through the other lane of the Lincoln Tunnel. Very funny. Let's avoid that...

6:10 over the Tappan Zee! The first realistic time it gave me.

So yeah, it took 5 clicks longer than usual, when I might have expected one. Oh well. Still, it really does kick ass. I've never ever gotten good directions to the Tappan Zee before, or directions at all from a mapping site. Thanks, MapQuest!

Comments

heh

[kazulrw.livejournal.com]

wow, you'd think it would be smart enough to know that avoiding the linc means not even approaching it, rather than "I have a neurotic preference for being on the right hand side of the road" or whatever.

on various road trips I've generally found the holland tunnel to be more friendly and less annoying than the lincoln.

Re: heh

[alanscottevil.livejournal.com]

I'm still waiting for an online map site to let you pick your *own* route in order to compare distances, etc.

Re: heh

[desh]

You already can, sort of.

Re: heh

[alanscottevil.livejournal.com]

Yeah but unfortunately to get a good accurate distance measure you have to click on every turn of the road...for hundreds of miles!

I'd like a system when you could just click on the roads you want your path to follow.

Re: heh

[desh]

True. And the other option is to enter intermediate addresses on MapQuest Beta, picking addresses carefully to force it to take you the way you want to go. Also has problems, but it sort of gets the job done.

Re: heh

[desh]

Yeah, I think the fact that the Linc is actually multiple tunnels is what throws it off. If you had to click avoid for, like, every lane, it would suck.

Actually, I wonder how hard it is to Avoid the NJ turnpike, what with its two sides that you can occasionally switch between.