Adding Weather and Traffic to Trip Directions
I am kicking around - draft mock-up above - some feature options for adding two other factors into Google Maps (Directions): Weather and Traffic. By leveraging weather and traffic data throughout the route, a Google Trip feature can refer the optimal travel time to save on time and gasoline.
- Avoiding adverse weather conditions can optimize safest travel times.
- Dots on route represent time increments; time increments change depending on distance.
- Like time-of-day/traffic algorithms, historical data could relate weather effects on traffic through an area.
- Changing departure time alters estimates; peak traffic times, construction hours, etc.
- Weather overlay potentially can offer users to play/ffw/rew stream of moving weather patterns.
A little background - Last week we took a road trip to DC and this weekend we headed on a short trip up to Madison to visit a friend. This got me curious about how often do people take road trips (over 2 hours)? I typically don’t, but realized that there are a lot of college students and people in general that have a car/flight limit - under 3 hours and they drive, over they look to fly. We mapped out most our trip on Google Maps and I do like the new social options of sharing trip data with others in Google+. I got to thinking about the other influences that affect driving times.
Love to hear how often you’ve taken road trips, over two hours and just generally if you have feedback.
