Google Maps – Woops and Suggestions

Google_Maps_logo

I’m planning a short vacation. So the obvious thing to do is to use Google Maps to plan the trip. After putting in some way points, I got to a ferry, and Google croaked… I’ve got some screen shots that show the problems and I’ve got some suggestions about features that are missing.

Valid_Ferry_Terminal_Destination

The vacation we have planned takes us from Coos Bay, OR to Anacortes, WA. From there we take a ferry to Sidney, Victoria Island and then by ferry to Vancouver, BC. Well the first problem occurred when I added a destination to Sidney.

01_Valid_Ferry_Terminal_Destination

Here the Ferry Terminal shows correctly and the directions are valid. I added a destination of Anacortes, WA and then dragged the marker down the street to the ferry building. That was fine and as you can see from the above picture the Ferry Terminal Rd is a valid destination.

Then I added Sidney, but spelled it wrong, but no worries mate, Google helped correct that. But the ferry stopped the trip dead in the water, so to speak. How about we add an option for “As the Crow Flys” or some such routing in the middle of a trip, until we get ferries added to Google routing, that is.

03_NoFallback_Failure

But after adding the ferry, and having that fail, I got a messed up trip destination list with duplicated entries.

02_Failed_Trip_List

So apparently Google has forgotten the location of the entry that it added to the list. Sigh… That was pretty lame don’t you think? And then it apparently just coughed up a hairball that caused a real mess.

The Bottom Line

Google Maps has some issues:

  1. Sometimes GM forgets the location of entries that it adds to a route when you drag a flag. That clearly should never happen.
  2. There is no way to do “As the crow flys” for legs of a trip where other routes are not possible. This would be useful in many instances. Say I don’t want to travel, but just measure distances on a map. As the crow flys would allow me to measure distances along a route between way points.
  3. Each leg of a trip should drop back to ATCF, if routing can’t be done by other ways, with an appropriate message of course, to allow me to continue with the entire trip in a single route. In this case I have to break up my trip simply because I’m going to take some ferries.
  4. Google should support ferry trips – not schedules, but just routing and distances – to help plan trips that include ferries.

Now I’m going to look in Google Maps and figure out how to pass this to them.

– windy