Slopeless in Seattle

If you want to avoid the hills of Seattle then you can use AccessMap, a map which provides walking directions that avoid hills and other accessibility barriers.

Streets on AccessMap are colored by the steepness of their incline. The map also includes the locations of marked and unmarked crossings. When you ask for directions from one part of Seattle to another you can assign the maximum uphill and downhill steepness that you are comfortable with. The map includes a number of preset options which are designed for wheelchairs, powered chairs and walkers with canes.

After a query the suggested route for your journey is shown on the interactive map. If you click on the 'Trip Info' button you can view an elevation of your suggested route, the total distance of the route and the estimated time. If you select the 'Directions' button you can see step-by-step instructions for the trip.


If you are a wheelchair user in Seattle, or anywhere else in the world, then you can use Wheelmap, to find out how accessible buildings and services are. The colors of the markers on the map indicate how accessible a venue is. Green markers indicate that a building is fully wheelchair accessible. Orange markers show a location is only partially accessible and red markers indicate venues which cannot be accessed by wheelchairs.

Wheelmap is a crowd-sourced project which means that anybody can add information to the map. The grey markers on the map indicate venues that Wheelmap has no information about. If you have information about the venue's accessibility to wheelchair visitors you can simply click on the marker and select whether it is wheelchair accessible, partially accessible or not accessible.

Discover Your City's DNA

Moovel Lab has created an interactive map tool which will enable you to discover your city's Urban Mobility Fingerprint and Street DNA.

The Mobility Fingerprint map which the tool creates shows the routes which can be taken from a single central location in a city to many destinations around the city within a set travel time. The routes on the map are colored by their compass direction. For example, the map above shows where and how far you can drive from Central Park in 15 minutes and the routes which you would have to drive to get to these destinations.

The Street DNA (on the right in the image above) rotates all the routes on the map so that they align north to south. An ideal straight line here would indicate that the route taken from A to B was in a direct straight line. However very few cities have straight roads shooting out from a central location like the spokes of a wheel. In reality in most cities to get from A to B you have to take many twists and turns. In New York, for example, the city's rivers tend to be natural obstacles when getting from A to B, forcing motorists to route via the Brooklyn Bridge, Battery Tunnel, Queensboro Bridge etc. The result is that New York's Street DNA has lots of routes which deviate a long way from the ideal straight line.


In the example Street DNA images created by Moovel Lab for different cities waterways and topographical features such as hills seem to feature prominently in those cities which have large deviations from the 'ideal' straight routes. The image above shows the Street DNAs for San Francisco and Moscow. Routes in Moscow tend to be far straighter than in San Francisco. In San Francisco the roads have to cope with many large hills and the vast expanse of water surrounding much of the city.

You can use Moovel Lab's Explore tool to create your own Mobility Fingerprint and Street DNA maps. The tool only works for European towns and cities. Using the tool you can adjust the travel time and mode of transport. You can also set any location as the center point for your map visualizations.

The Uber Driving Times Map

Uber Movement Speeds visualizes the normal driving speeds of Uber drivers on an interactive map. Using the map you can discover the historical aggregated speed achieved by Uber drivers during different times of the day and on different days of the week. The map comes with a whole range of filtering tools which really allow you to dig deep into the data of the average speeds that are really driven on our streets.

The map's default view colors road segments by the average speed driven. If you click on an individual segment of road you can view further details, including the street name, the average speed, and the percentage from free-flow speed. These details also include charts which show the average speed trends over time and when the speed on that stretch deviates from the norm.

Using the filter tools you can visualize speed averages for specific date-time ranges, day of the week, and time of day. You can also use the color bar to filter the map to only show roads with specific average speeds.


Obviously the average speeds which are achieved on roads can greatly affect the driving time of a car journey. If you are interested in how long a journey might take then you can check the Uber Travel Time map.

This interactive map allows you to view the average travel times between two different neighborhoods. If you click to place your point of origin and destination on the map the Uber Travel Time map will display the average time for your journey. All the other neighborhoods are color coded to show the average journey times to those neighborhoods from the starting point of your journey.

When you query a journey time the Uber Travel Time map also shows you charts which visualize the average journey time for different days of the week and for different times of the day.

The UK's Most Stressful Commutes

If you hate your morning journey to work just be thankful that you don't have to commute from Westhoughton to Manchester. The Co-op have ranked this journey as the most stressful commute in the UK. The 33 mile round-trip commute from Westhoughton to Manchester would take you 3 hours and 40 minutes to drive during the evening and morning rush hour.

The Co-op's Rush Hour Routes is an interactive map which can calculate the stress levels of your daily commute and how your journey to work compares to the most stressful commutes in the UK. If you enter the postcode of your home and your workplace into Rush Hour Routes you can view the Co-op's estimation of how long your commute should take during rush hour and how long it would take during a clear run. It will also rank your commute in terms of how stressful the journey is compared to other commutes in the UK. The Co-op calculates the stress level of a journey based on the time increase percentage of your journey during the rush hour. The longer your journey takes during rush hour, compared to your journey time on a clear run, then the higher the stress score.

Rush Hour Routes uses the latest data on travel times from the Google Maps API. This means that the data and the predictions are regularly changing. In general the most stressful routes are usually in London and Manchester. The Westhoughton to Manchester commute, mentioned above, is usually in the Rush Hour Routes top 5 most stressful commutes. Golders Green to Central London and Elephant and Castle to Central London are also normally in the top 5 most stressful commutes.

A Virtual Drive Around Japan

This morning I've been taking a gentle virtual drive around the Shinjuku area of Tokyo. My virtual drive was made possible by 'Map Fan Traveling Image', an interactive map created by Increment P. Increment P is a Japanese mapping company which provides map data for the car navigation system industry. One way in which Increment P collects this mapping data is by driving survey vehicles around Japan. These survey vehicles are fitted with cameras which continuously take still images while they drive.

MapFan Traveling Image is an experimental map which uses these images to provide a 'Street View' type tour of Tokyo. MapFan is currently preparing an API which will provide access to the company's 'street view' images. MapFan Traveling Image is a demo of what this API will provide. At the moment the demo allows you to explore the imagery captured by Increment P's survey cars in the Shinjuku and Ikebukuro neighborhoods of Tokyo. The demo allows you to virtually drive around the two neighborhoods steering the survey car as you go.

If you click play on the street view image on the Traveling Image map you can sit back and watch as the map takes you on a virtual drive around Tokyo. As the images play the map automatically moves to keep you centered on the location shown in the current image. You can change the direction that you are facing by clicking on the arrow on the Street View image. This allows you to either have a 'rear view mirror' view of your journey or a forward looking view. When you are approaching an intersection left and right arrows appear on the Street View image which allow you to steer the car and change direction.

Britain's Most Expensive Wrong Turn

The UK is obsessed at the moment with the concept of expensive wrong turns. Which is why insurance company Quotezone has released a thinly veiled attack on Brexit in the form of an interactive map.

The Worst Places in the UK to Take a Wrong Turn purports to be an interactive map visualizing the worst 18 places in Britain to take a wrong turn or miss a junction on a motorway. The map shows the locations of each of these 18 most expensive wrong turns on the motorway network. For each of the 18 turns it also shows the total number of detour miles motorists will end up driving, the time needed to rectify the mistake and how much money the driver will have to pay for the extra fuel use caused by their mistake.

The worst place to take a wrong turn in the UK is on London's orbital motorway, the M25. If a driver misses the southbound exit on the M26 and accidentally ends up on the M25 then they will have to travel for another 18 miles to correct their course, adding 31 minutes onto their journey at a cost of £3.44.

Of course we all know that The Worst Places in the UK to Take a Wrong Turn is a clever metaphorical attack on the Brexit referendum. That wrong turn will cost a little more than £3.44.

Avoid the Sun Walking Directions

If even the mere thought of walking in the midday sun gives you sweaty palms then you need the new Parasol walking directions map. Parasol is a routing engine for Boston which can give you walking directions between any two points in the city, optimized for walking in the shade. If you love the sun then don't worry. Parasol isn't just for those looking for shade, it can also be used to find you a route that avoids the shade and maximizes your time in the sun.

Using Parasol you can ask for walking directions in Boston and get directions based on how much sun or shade you prefer. You just need to enter two locations into the map, adjust a slide control to enter the level of sun/shade you require and enter the time of day when you will be walking. Parasol will then show you your route based on the level of sun/shade that you requested.

Parasol uses lidar data to work out the location and the height of buildings and trees and other objects that provide shade in Boston. It then uses that data to calculate the position of the shadows cast by those objects depending on the position of the sun. A cost function that incorporates the level of sun/shade is then calculated and the shortest path between two points is mapped out given this custom cost. You can learn more about how this is implemented and what tools were used in the author's blog post on Parasol.

Funky Road-Trip Planning

Long car journeys can be very boring. If you want to break up a long road-trip then you can always use Make My Drive Fun to find interesting pit-stops along your route.

Make My Drive Fun is a route planner which includes the 'funkiest places' to visit along each route. Just enter your starting point and destination into Make My Drive Fun and it will create a map for your route. The map will include a number of markers showing 'funky attractions' within less than a 20 minute drive of your route.


You can also find fun things to do on your road-trip using the Rand McNally Trip Maker. This interactive road trip planning tool can give you turn-by-turn driving directions for your trip with the option to find interesting places to visit along the route.

If you are looking for interesting pit-stops on your journey then you can use the 'Things to Do' option. This allows you to search for rest-stops and points of interest along your route. You can even define how far you are prepared to deviate from your route by entering the number of miles. When you are happy with your planned road trip you can email and export your trips to any Rand McNally GPS device.


You can also use Roadtrippers to plan a journey with interesting diversions. Roadtrippers allows you to find pit-stops along your route using a number of different options. For example you can define how far off your route you want to search for suggested stops. You can also save your planned trips on Roadtrippers for later reference.

Roadtrippers includes a huge database of points of interest. This includes cafes, gas stations and hotels. It also includes tourist destinations and offbeat, strange and unusual places to visit.

Driving Directions for Electric Cars

If you drive from New York to San Francisco in an electric car you can save $381 in gas. However you will need to stop 19 times on the journey to recharge your car. I know this because I asked Tesla's new trip planning map to work out the route.

Go Anywhere is a simple trip planning tool for electric car drivers. The tool is a stripped down version of Tesla's in-car navigation system. Using the tool you can get a quick overview of the duration of a journey and all the car-charging locations along the route.

Go Anywhere allows you to add different stages to your route and it also has an option to show you the location of charging stations near the end of your route. However Go Anywhere really only provides a snapshot of your journey. It doesn't provide you with any detailed driving directions. Of course, if you are a Tesla driver, then you have your in-car navigation system to provide you with these detailed directions, while you actually drive.

Pollution Free Walking Routes

Nitrogen dioxide emitted by motor vehicles has been above the legal limit in London for longer than most people care to remember. This means that pedestrians & cyclists can't really avoid pollution in the capital. However it is possible to cut your exposure to air pollution in half by avoiding the city's busiest roads.

The Cross River Partnership can help you find a healthier route for your walking and cycling journeys with a new interactive map, the Clean Air Route Finder. The map allows you to enter a starting point and a destination for your walk and then suggests routes that avoid the busiest roads.

The Clean Air Route Finder in fact suggests three different routes for each query. The red route shows the most polluted walk or ride. The green suggestion shows you the route with the lowest pollution. The amber route is somewhere in the middle. The map also tells you the distance and the estimated walking or biking time for each route.

Cycling and walking route finders depend to a large degree on the underlying routing data. The Clean Air Route Finder works really well in my neighborhood, fully utilizing road free bike paths and canal towpaths (you might be surprised how many other biking & walking direction maps ignore these routes). Judging by its choice of the cleanest routes it also seems to have a good understanding of the level of traffic on London's roads.

Animated Street View Driving Directions

You can create your own animated Street View driving routes with Map Channels' Animated Route Maps. Just enter a starting point and a destination into Animated Route Maps and you can view the entire route animated on Google Maps Street View.

The application provides a great way to preview a route before undertaking a journey. It can also be used to provide an animated Street View tour of any location around the world that you wish to explore on Google Maps Street View.

Animated Route Maps actually allows you to view your route in three connected map views. One window shows the route animated in Street View. The other two windows show the route using Google Maps' satellite and oblique aerial views. If you only want to view the animated route in Street View then you can click on the little 'full-screen' button in the Street View window.

Map Channels can also be used to provide a static Street View, Map and Bird's Eye view of any location in the world. Dual Maps combines Street View, Google Maps and Bird's Eye aerial views into one embeddable map. It's a great way to show your website users a location using three different map views of the same place.

Both Animated Route Maps and Dual Maps are free to use and can be embedded into your own website or blog by copying and posting the provided iframe code.

The Cost of Driving

Nearly all major highways in Brazil have tolls. Many of these tolls are expensive and make driving a costly enterprise for the average Brazilian.

Qualp is a new service for Brazilian drivers which provides driving directions with the latest information on toll costs. Using the service drivers can not only get driving directions for a route but also find out how much the trip will cost.

After entering a starting point and destination (you can also add any number of waypoints for your trip) Qualp displays your route on a Google Map and tells you the total amount you will have to pay in tolls. All the toll stations along the route are indicated by markers on the map and the map sidebar shows how much each toll station will cost.

The prices and locations of toll stations are updated daily so all the information provided by Qualp is as accurate as possible. Qualp also includes the option to view real-time traffic conditions along your route.

The Time Travel Journey Planner

The journey from London to Manchester is actually 8 miles longer today than it was in 1945. However you can complete the journey now in half the time and for half the cost than you could just after the end of World War II.

Maps Time Travel is a new Google Maps route planner that calculates a route between any UK destination and compares the journey today with the same journey in 1945. Just enter two different UK locations into the map and you can view a map of your route today and a route using the road network as it existed in 1945 - before the construction of the motorway system.

The map sidebar shows you a comparison between the journey today and the journey in 1945. It reveals the journey times for the two different journeys , the journey lengths and the costs of both journeys (the 1945 fuel costs are in today's money and account for inflation).

The World Driving Times Map

Last year Empty Pipes made a series of beautiful looking isochrone maps showing public transit travel times from major European cities. Now Empty Pipes is back with Isochrone Driving Maps of the World.

Using OpenStreetMap mapping data and the Graphopper open source routing library Empty Pipes has created a series of maps for towns and cites around the world. The map visualize the driving times when starting from the center of each of the mapped cities.

Empty Pipes also makes a number of interesting observations based on his ischrone maps of driving times. For example he notices how many of the driving time maps for cities in the US have a distinctive pyramid shape. One result of the grid patterns of many American cities is that it takes much longer to drive 'along the diagonal than to travel straight north and south'.

Elsewhere geographical features can be seen to have a huge impact on driving times. For example in Santiago, Chile the Andes mountains have a clear impact on anyone driving east of the city.

Animated Optimal Road Trips

This year optimal road trips have been a popular theme for map developers. In its most basic form the 'optimal road trip' provides the shortest journey around a country (or any list of destinations), while also visiting each and every region at least once.

Here are some example maps, showing an Optimal Road Trip Across the United States, an Optimal Road Trip Across Europe and an Optimal Road Trip Around India.

You can now view three optimal road trips in which the routes have also been animated. The VROOM Optimized Road Trips Gallery includes three animated maps; a coast to coast U.S. roadtrip through 48 state capitals, a tour of the 244 biggest towns in metropolitan France and a trip around 2232 Irish pubs.

The optimal routes for each trip were calculated using VROOM, an optimization engine for vehicle routing problems. The animated polylines for the routes were created using the new SnakeAnim plug-in for Leaflet maps.

Road-Trip Mix-Tapes with Google Maps

I've always really liked the concept behind Roadtrip Mixtape. Roadtrip Mixtape is a great Google Map which can create a musical play-list for any road-trip. What's more the play-list will contain songs only by artists that are from the areas which you are traveling through.

Drive through Boston and you might hear Aerosmith or Donna Summer. Drive through New Orleans and you might hear Lil Wayne or Dr. John.

To use the application you just need to add the starting point of your journey and your destination. Your journey is then displayed on a Google Map. Each leg of the journey is represented on the map by a green marker. If you click on a marker you can view a list of local artists from that stage of the journey. You can even listen to 30 second samples of each song listed.


Spoogle can also create a musical mix-tape for your journey. Spoogle however will create a mix-tape which lasts for the whole of your journey. It will also give you the driving directions for your trip.

Enter your starting point and destination into Spoogle. Choose your travel mode (driving, transit, walking or cycling). Then enter some search terms (used for the music selection). Spoogle will then show your journey on a Google Map and provide you with a music play-list timed to last for the same length of time as your journey.

If you sign-in to Spoogle with your Spotify account you can also save your journey play-list to Spotify.

Toronto's Green Directions

Toronto has a new directions service which can find you the prettiest route from A to B. Greenlane is an interactive routing map which provides cycling and walking directions in Toronto. More importantly it uses park, tree and trail data to find you the greenest route for your walk or bike ride.

Greenlane is very simple to use. Just enter your starting point and your destination. Then choose whether you want cycling or walking directions. You then have the choice to decide on a faster or greener route. Choose the greener option and the resulting directions will try to take you on the greenest route.

Each time you ask Greenlane for directions it will give you the choice of three different routes. Each route in clearly marked with the estimated time it will take you to complete your journey.

The Evolution of the Traveling Salesman

There are a few interactive maps that attempt to solve the perennial Traveling Salesman Problem (TSP).  This is the challenge to find the shortest route possible given a number of predefined stops. Among the most interesting solutions has been the Forio Route Optimizer, which finds the quickest route (with a number of stops), while also factoring in real-time traffic conditions on the roads.

I also like this new TSP map which iterates through solutions live on a map. Which means you can watch as better and better solutions evolve over time. The Ann Arbor Yum Planner allows you to solve the Traveling Salesman Problem for a number of Ann Arbor businesses. You can select from the city's restaurants, cafes, bars, takeouts, deliveries or bakeries to evolve a quick route which takes in all of the businesses or any combination of the business categories.

The map starts with a route and then mutates the route. From these off-spring routes it selects the four best routes. It then repeats this iteration hundreds of times until settling on an acceptable route.

The Rand McNally Trip Planner

Rand McNally Trip Maker is a new interactive road trip planning tool. Using the map you can get turn-by-turn driving directions for your trip with the option to find interesting places to visit along the route.

To create a road trip with Trip Maker you just need to enter a starting location and your destination. You can add extra stops to your trip simply by selecting the 'Add Stop' button. Your new stop will then be added to your to a trip automatically, in the location that best minimizes your total driving distance.

You can adjust the route of your trip simply by dragging the route line around on the map. If you want to add a waypoint to a route you can therefore just drag and drop the line on your desired location and the the route will automatically update.

If you want to make some pit-stops along your route you can use the 'Search on My Way' option. This allows you to search for rest-stops and points of interest along your route. You can even define how far you are prepared to deviate from your route for interesting places to visit by entering the number of miles.

When you are happy with your planned road trip you can email and export your trips to any Rand McNally GPS device.

America's Greatest Drives

The US Secretary of Transportation used to have a website, called Byways.org, which provided detailed information on over 850 scenic roads in the United States, including maps, sample trips and points of interest along the way. Unfortunately the website was taken off-line in September 2013.

America's Scenic Byways is an open-sourced project to provide an alternative to the now long departed Byways.org. The site uses data taken from Byways.org, before it disappeared, and information provided by the new site's users.

America's Scenic Byways includes a Google Map of all the scenic featured drives in the US. You can search for drives near you by location. Selecting a drive on the map will take you to a map of the route with information on its length and the likely time it would take to drive.

All of the featured drives on America's Scenic Byways include photos and information about the landscape and topography you can see on the route and details about points of interest along the way.