Multi-Stop Driving Directions & Optimized Routing

November 30, 2005 11:15 PM

Mapping & multi-stop driving directions: is there a free online mapping tool that will allow me to enter several locations in a US city and then display the quickest driving route to pass through all those locations? I've seen one called NavPro but it's not free.
posted by masymas to travel & transportation (5 comments total)

http://maps.yahoo.com/beta
posted by mrkohrea at 12:48 AM on December 1, 2005

I did a google, and then found a multi-map point PHP script that uses the Google API. Once I had that sucker, I just plotted all the points on the map through the script, and Google maps did the rest.

If I recall correctly, I used Phoogle Maps.
posted by thanotopsis at 4:47 AM on December 1, 2005

Paging Dr Dijkstra....
posted by jon_kill at 6:50 AM on December 1, 2005

If Yahoo! Maps can't do what you're looking for then you're probably out of luck. You might also look into Mapsonus.com.

Yahoo! will let you plan a multi-stop route but it relies on you to set the order of the stops. Mapsonus automagically selects the optimal route. I'm not sure but I think Mapsonus has a limit to the number of stops that you can have. 6? I've had over a dozen in Yahoo! maps (beta) without any problem.

The auto-routing feature doesn't really add anything useful over Yahoo! anyway. For something on the order of "several" stops you can probably plan the route perfectly in a few seconds if you're looking at a map.
posted by stuart_s at 8:49 AM on December 1, 2005

The beta of Yahoo Maps really is a great choice for this. Not only can you plot multiple points, but you can click&drag the points to reorder them, which is then reflected in the directions. I'm a Google kind of guy, but Yahoo has won me over -- for mapping anyway.
posted by kc0dxh at 8:56 AM on December 1, 2005