Mapping Hacks

The Road Less Traveled by in MapQuest #5

Chapter 1, Mapping Your Life

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HACK

suggesting an average speed of about 56 mph for the whole leg (223 miles

divided by 239 minutes times 60 minutes per hour = 56 miles per hour).

Breaking that down, it is 58 mph for the I-5 portion.

I know that I can drive faster on the interstate, but does that mean I’ll get

there sooner? Who knows! I have a new camera and I’m snap-happy. Maybe

we’ll stop every 10 miles on either route. Perhaps there is an interesting

museum right off the interstate. MapQuest can’t tell us what we’ll do, but

using their idea of travel time and average speed will help us out. See “Will

the Kids Barf?”

[Hack #7] to get another trick to use with MapQuest.

Tricking MapQuest with Multiple Routes

MapQuest always gives us the “best” route, where “best” is set by their pro-

grammers. If we want to compare different routes, we need to break up our

original trip into sections so that MapQuest is forced to give us our pre-

ferred route, and then we need to add up the segments.

For example, when we asked for the route from Eugene to Crescent City,

MapQuest routed us through Grants Pass. The service won’t give us a route

from Eugene to Florence, on the coast, and then down to Crescent City. But

MapQuest will give us the route from Eugene to Florence, if we ask nicely,

and then the route from Florence to Crescent City.

So how do the different options