At risk of summoning an army of vibe coders, I wish map apps were more configurable and let you set "I'm happy to walk 20 min" or "someone can drive me a few miles and drop me off"
While we're asking for navigation features, I desperately want a "chill" toggle.
I drive around the NY metropolitan area a lot. No, I don't want to take the route that saves a few minutes if it involves merging onto I95 at rush hour with 300 feet to cross 4 lanes of traffic for the next exit.
I vote for a "lock it in" feature for motorbike riding.
I set up the route, clip the phone onto the quadlock mount, ride down the street and it auto changes the route because of something motorbikes don't care about.
Or it rains and that counts as pressing buttons.
And now I am riding and with gloves on so I can't fix it.
> And now I am riding and with gloves on so I can't fix it.
It doesn't fix the problem of bad software, but try adding something like https://glovetacts.com/ to your riding glove index fingers for this particular issue.
Yeah, I used to ride with a little speaker on one side of my helmet on the inside... nothing infuriated quite like a leisurely fun ride with the audio constantly telling me to make a u-turn or whatever because it found a route that was 57 minutes instead of 59.
I'd love a "I saw your suggestions, I selected one of them, don't give me any more suggestions" feature. This was on google maps.
As for detecting rain, that'd be a whole other algorithm.
I love when Google maps in the NY metro area makes me want to take a left-turn, at a stop sign at intersection with a 6 lane road that doesn't get a stop. Yes, these insanities exist and are basically fucking death traps to attempt lefts.
This has driven me so crazy it’s about to push me off Google maps. If I’m driving upstate, I want to choose a nice straightforward highway route and stay on it. No, I don’t care if I need to sit in a little bit of traffic. No, Google, I don’t want you take it upon yourself to change my route to a bunch of back roads through Bear Mountain to avoid an 8-minute slowdown. I want you to just take me down the route you showed me when I started navigation.
I’ve had a couple times now where Google Maps has taken me into absolutely terrible traffic jams on back roads in areas where there is limited cell service. What seems to be happening is that there is a slowdown on the main road and a blind spot on the back route with no service, so Google assumes there are no cars there and no traffic, so it just funnels everyone that way until the whole route clogs up. Utterly infuriating.
All maps need to have an extra time penalty for turns, merging, etc. Even if the data is taken with an average driver, average driver probably isn't there for the first time, and for someone unfamiliar with the area any extra turn adds an extra chance to take a wrong turn.
It's amazing how bad this is in the Bay area. I wonder how map engineers don't dogfood. Or what is it that prevents them from making the maps better? They sure have no problem making changes that make maps worse.
You can do this already. Leave the map up, but silence all direction corrections. Then try to make your own way. If you already have the time to chill, you can take a little more time to think ahead about the route you’ll try. Make a wrong turn or exit and the map will still point you in the right direction.
Apple Maps suggests “your preferred route” as an option when you frequently travel an alternative path. In addition, all maps apps I know of have options to configure use of toll roads and highways.
Let me add to that: how about “no uncontrolled left turns onto busy streets” mode? Google Maps does this to me all the time and it’s infuriating, it’s up to me to avoid it.
For us in Australia it's uncontrolled right turns, and it is absolutely infuriating that many journeys would be temporally shorter if the route waited longer for the turn at an intersection with lights. Google Maps would almost surely have this data. It's been like this for at least a decade.
It's a FOSS public transport routing engine. In the options you can select what type and how much time you want to spend on the first and last "mile" (even something like bike/scooter sharing).
It uses open data or data connectors for the routing. And being FOSS, if there is no data connector yet for you region, it may be interesting to contribute one if there is a sane way to query the data from the local transport compan(y|ies).
It's not exactly what you asked for, but the public transit and multimodal focused apps are generally much better at this stuff. I like CityMapper and Transit.
Neither is good for turn-by-turn directions, but both are good for "what are all the different ways to get there"
This already exists: in "Trip options", you can toggle between "Best route", "Fewer transfers", and "Less walking", as well as allow/block "Ride services" like Uber as a transport option.
How well these options work is another question, but "Fewer transfers" does seem to allow more walking. And of course you can straight up ask for walking directions instead.
Was about to write the same - those options do exist already.
It works quite well in my experience.
Although quality may depend on how well a specific city mapped out. Melbourne for example have options for accessibility (City consuls pays for mapping accessibility scores\options and I guess those details help to plan in maps and just generally a good city benchmark).
Preferred and connecting modes works well too - one can specify if ride service or drive is not an option or bus is meh. One thing I wish to have there is 2-3 presets of these options so I can quickly switch between combinations of - "get there fast", "get on specific time", "get with my most comfortable preferences". It's all there, just switching it every time is a bit of annoying.
Conversely, as a cyclist, Google Maps infuriatingly will refuse to route you along an expressway, even when it's the shortest or only route without a huge detour. e.g. Lawrence Expressway where it crosses in an underpass under Central Expressway. This is a long-standing known issue with Google Maps routings for cycling mode.
Yes. Transit App allows you configure both your walking and cycling speeds. Combine that with selecting which other methods you allow, and you get lots of options, and more accurate ETAs.
Here's a tip if you use google maps: if you want to get from A to B but can walk a bit, just pick a point C between them then look up directions to and from point C separately. Works great
Pro-tip: if you want to get from A to B without using Google Maps, simply pick a sequence of intermediate points A = a_0, …, a_n = B where each pair of consecutive points aren’t too far apart, and then travel to each point in turn.
What do you mean "but with a waypoint”? What happens if you route on public transit without a waypoint? Do you mean indirect spaghetti routings that seem ok to Google?
No I like to find out how long it will take to go to one place and then another. With driving selected you can add arbitrary waypoints. For public transit you can have one destination only. I suppose it makes sense because they like to tell you via schedule how long it will take, and the map would need to know how long you will stay each location. But when I’m looking I’m just checking if a route exists, not which time I will take the train.
