Something I’d like to see…
Is Google, or some one else, to do an overlay of their maps system and traffic data. Because I drive to work each day, and the traffic can be a bit interesting, it’d be nice to know what the fastest route is. Of course I use the MN DOT Traffic Map to help me decide which way would be the fastest route. But that’s not always updated (as you can tell they don’t even have all the major highways).
And what if a slowdown occurs while you’re driving? If you don’t hear it on the radio you don’t know about it. (Of course if you have a Palm then you can just bring up that page to view the map, but that solution isn’t much of an option for me currently).
Because having an updated map isn’t always possible: Wouldn’t it be cool to have a site that calculates driving times from point A to point B using a variety of different roads? Say I want to take 35E to 694. That might be the fastest one day, but it could be super slow as well. But what if there’s an accident some place. Then it would tell me to take 35E to 36 to 35W to 694. Sweet, I can avoid some traffic. Or maybe 35E is really backed up. Then it could say take Como to Dale to 36 to Snelling to 694.
The system would have to know the speedlimit of all the streets that it would have, stop light locations, etc. It would also have to take information directly from MN DOT (or some other traffic site). It would look at the traffic on all those streets, factor in speed limits, stop lights, etc. and tell you which route is the fastest (based upon the current conditions). This would be nice.
Granted there is no data out there for traffic conditions on the smaller roads (Like Dale or Como), but it would be pretty sweet. If only I coded that much…. although there is a snow storm coming and I might not have a whole lot better to do. On second thought, I problaby will.
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The mapping systems already know all that stuff except the traffic data. Unfortunately for algorithmic simplicity reasons they use freeways heavily, so I doubt anyone would offer an online version that truly evaluates all routes anytime soon. I’m pretty sure some of the desktop apps do that though, so if you wanted to add in traffic data that’d be the way to go.
Comment by Jeremy — February 28, 2007 @ 10:07 pm
And on this topic…
Comment by Jeremy — February 28, 2007 @ 11:22 pm
Yeah, I saw that at work yesterday. The only problem mapping with all the routes is that I’m unsure where to get all that data from. MN/DOT only reports freeways. Maybe someday…
Comment by bleaus — March 1, 2007 @ 7:20 am
That’s because that’s the only thing they monitor real-time.
Comment by Jeremy — March 1, 2007 @ 3:08 pm