Ask MetaFilter questions tagged with maps and driving

Driving Time Google Map Mash Up?

John Frum — Thu, 21 May 2009 20:16:31 -0800

Does a Google Maps (or other mapping service) mash-up exist that will show me the driving time to various places in a heat map type format? So basically what TripTop does for the NYC subway system, but for driving instead? I'm in the St. Louis area. So, what I'm envisioning is a Google Map that would show me that in 4 hours I could drive to Kansas City, Memphis, Indianapolis, and Louisville. In less than 6 hours I could drive to Madison, Cincinnati, Little Rock, and Tulsa. Something like UPS does for shipping times, but on a driving scale. This would be a great tool for planning weekend getaways.

How does the Google Streetview driver decide what path he will take to get the most coverage with the least repetition?

farmersckn — Wed, 14 Jan 2009 14:10:44 -0800

I have a task where I have a bunch of streets that I need to drive on, (but not all streets like StreetView) and I would like to know how is the best method to accomplish this while limiting the amount of extra un-needed driving? I have poked about into the "Travelling Salesman Problem" and it is geared towards travelling to different "cities or points" not paths or streets.

I also have thought about doing a "zigzag" where I start at the north west corner of the map and travel east on the northernmost street and then go south at the end of that street until I get to the next east-west street and go west until I get to the westernmost part of the street and then go south again... rinse repeat,
and then do it again but at a 90 degree rotation so now my primary direction of travel is north/south and i use the east-west streets to move over one street again...

That sounds so much more complicated than it really is...

Its more like... Go west until you are done with the street. Now go down one block and go East until you are done with that street. Now go down another block and go west until you are done...

Where this gets problematic is when you have weird layouts in your city like angled streets or circular neighborhoods or big blocks taken out of your map like for airports or schools.

Any suggestions or research material I could look at?

Thank you

How do I include a link to driving directions in an embedded Google Map?

designbot — Fri, 29 Jun 2007 14:55:08 -0800

What is the best way to embed a Google Map of a business's location, including a link to driving directions? This is for a small business's website. All I want is a small embedded map of the business's location, with a standard pop-up flag including links for driving directions, the address, etc. (Basically like what you see here, but without the extra search results on the left-hand side.

If there's a better input method for requesting driving directions, that would be fine too.

I would think that providing a map & driving directions to a specific business would be one of the most common uses of the Google Maps API, but I don't see any examples of what I'm looking for. Surely, there must be a simple, standard way to provide driving directions on your website… Right?

Driving from Alabama to Seattle.

bamassippi — Sat, 12 Aug 2006 19:17:55 -0800

I'm driving cross-country and I'm looking for an online guide as to what I need to see along the way. I'll be driving from Jasper, Alabama to Seattle, Washington within the next 2 weeks.

I'm looking for particular websites/sources that will show me what will be in my area as I drive 2,600 miles across America.

Anybody?

Multi-Stop Driving Directions & Optimized Routing

masymas — Wed, 30 Nov 2005 23:15:43 -0800

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.

How

parma — Sat, 19 Feb 2005 10:45:21 -0800

Have you ever come across a site that gives you driving directions, like yahoo maps or mapquest, but lets you fiddle a bit with which roads to take/not to take? I want to be able to avoid traffic jams, or find directions that make the least possible turns and change of roads. (Like when I don't want to risk getting lost and ending up in a bad area of town after dark.)