New Google Maps Feature - Customize your route by dragging and dropping the line

Posted on July 14, 2007 at 1:43 pm

Wow, I looked up directions yesterday to go to Harrah’s Casino in New Orleans for a comedy show and I was annoyed because Google Maps kept telling me this long and drawn out way through bad neighborhoods that just didn’t make any sense! Yes, it was the fastest route out of them all, but I would have also liked to have lived through the drive for crying out loud!

Anyway, so then I saw in the left hand corner something new written: “New! Drag and drop the blue line to customize your route” and so I clicked on the link and watched the Google video on it. Suffice to say, I was a happy man after that!! This has been a feature that I’ve been waiting a LONG time for, the ability to change the route yourself and have Google figure out the new directions from that point on.

Ok so here’s my case: my house to the Harrah’s casino in New Orleans, LA! This is what Google gives me:

Alright, now as you can see I’m going along normal roads instead of the I-10 highway!!! Why the heck would I want to do that! It’s much easier to catch I-10 West and then take the downtown exit towards the bottom of the triangle! So what’s really cool now is that I can take any point on the map and move it to the street that I would like to start on.

So here’s what I did to finally get the route from my house to the casino to go through the highway: first I dragged the point of the first turn over to the street you see on the far right, Elysian Fields and I got this map:

Close, by still going straight through the highway instead of on to it! Now you see where that second “II” (looks like the pause button on a VCR) is towards the middle of the picture. Again, just grab a part of the route and drag it onto the highway and you’ll see that it automatically highlights the new route before you left go of the mouse. Once it picks the route you want, let go of the mouse! Here’s the final route that I wanted:

Not too shabby! Here’s a video of me trying the same thing:

Also, if you noticed from the first picture, you can also check off a new option called “Avoid Highways” which will do exactly what it says! In my case, I wanted it the other way around, but if you’re stuck with directions for a highway that you know is closed, this is the easy way to avoid that route. Enjoy!
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