Google Maps, New England style

[cos]

I just got the Google Maps version of "You can't get theah from heah!"

I'm planning a road trip for this summer, and using Google Maps to help me figure out distances on unfamiliar variants of cross country routes, and what stops make sense between one place and another. I just tried to get a route from Tempe, Arizona (new home of listgirl) to Hillsdale, NY (approximate site of Falcon Ridge Folk Festival).

This was Google's answer:


"We could not calculate driving directions between Tempe, AZ and Hillsdale, NY."

Comments

[struct.livejournal.com]

GM definitely won't give you the "as the crow flies" route every time, and a slight change in your starting point can generate completely different routes, as I learned the hard way when plotting a trip from Austin to Taos, NM.

I'm guessing that's because the route-plotting algorithm is chaotic (in the mathematical sense that is, i.e., an iterative function is used such that a slight change in initial conditions will completely alter the final outcome) and also I think adjusts the output route based on probable travel time, which in turn is based on road type and average traffic conditions.

Now if GM really wanted to get fancy, they could let you specify prefs like type of driver (conservative, average, aggressive), type of vehicle (fuel-efficient, avereage, gas-guzzler), etc., add to that factors like predicted weather and traffic, and adjust route-plotting accordingly.

At any rate, even though I do think Google Maps is the coolest (true dat, double true!) I prefer Rand McNally's TripMaker for anything over a day's journey.

[cos]

All of the online directions thingies wieght by road class (they don't, as far as I know, know anything about travel conditions and speed limits specifically, they just classify roads on a scale of several discrete classes). And they're all (or at least the ones I've tried) more or less deterministic. They change over time, probably due to new data or tweaks to the variables, but I've never done the same search with the same site and gotten different results within, say, the same week. And of course I don't want "as the crow flies" routes, these are driving directions. Road classes do matter. I wasn't expecting Google Maps to find the shortest route. I do expect MapQuest to find the most sensible route, because it usually does. Someday, maybe I'll have that expectation of Google Maps, too.

P.S. Many of the most egregious examples of MapQuest finding the sensible route and Google Maps not, are local trips.

[struct.livejournal.com]

I figured online route planners wouldn't use fuzzy logic, and it'd be bad (but amusing) if they did.

My experience with the big three is that they weight road classes too heavily. For instance, getting back to my Austin-to-Taos example, GM, MQ and YM all plotted an Austin-Wichita Falls-Amarillo-Taos route for me, probably because 35 is an Interstate. The straight shot down Highway 84 through Abilene, Lubbock and Clovis is the better way to go however, as I found out through personal experience.

The other problem with road classes (and this might explain in part the local route problem) is that a given road class can be a help or a hindrance depending on the time of day. For example (and here again I speak from personal experience) the Kennedy and the Dan Ryan are the best way to navigate Chicago northwest-southeast, except between the hours of 7:30-9:30a and 3:30-6:30p, in which case you need to avoid them like the plague because they turn into parking lots.