Custom Route Planning with Google Maps

For a while now I’ve wished that Google Maps would let me create a route by just clicking on the map to create my own points.  Google Maps will give me directions from point A to point B, but I don’t always like the route it chooses; often I’d like to be able to say "Go from point A to point B using a route which goes through point C on the way."

Well WalkJogRun.net does just that.  You just click your starting point, and it creates a marker there; you then keep clicking (creating new markers) along the route you want to create, until you get to your destination.

It’s designed primarily for planning exercise routes as you might have guessed, but it does allow you to set the speed for your route, so it will display the estimated time properly based on the length of the route.

Apparently the site has been around since late 2003, so I’m pretty late on discovering it.  On the other hand it originally used Yahoo and Mapquest maps, and I think we can all agree that the old way of online mapping was barely worth using at all (i.e. non-draggable maps that require the whole page to reload every time you change your view) now that we know the One True Path.

Posted by Anthony on 4 replies

Comments:

01. Jul 2, 2007 at 08:03pm by cgp:

It now does.

02. Jul 2, 2007 at 08:42pm by Anthony:

Yes, it does, which is great.

And just the other day they added another feature I’ve been wishing for: it now allows you (once you’ve created a set of driving directions) to click on the route and drag it, which causes Google Maps to recalculate the route’s distance and time, instantly, based on the new roads used.  It’s amazing.

03. Aug 10, 2007 at 11:18pm by Chris:

Google maps may have that feature but it still thinks it knows best ! If you tell it to from point A to B via point C, but it thinks going via point D is faster, it will change the route automatically ! This is not always desirable!

04. Jul 29, 2011 at 03:23pm by brian:

You can if you are logged into your google account and click on "My Maps".

http://maps.google.com/support/bin/static.py?hl=en&page=guide.cs&guide=21670&topic=21676&from=21676&rd=2

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