Turning Off Tolls in Google Maps

OK. After half an hour I've struggle, I've finally got it! I've found the new Google Maps to be a bit of a chore, if not a bore. The boring part? Trying to figure out how to work the thing.

In any case, the key to turning off tolls in the new Google Maps is to find the silly routes icon. It has thick vertical lines and thin horizontal lines and all these lines going that way and this way are supposed to signify all the different routes you could take. Looks more like the Chinese character for confusion to me. Not that I know anything about Chinese.

If that description doesn't help, look for the words Leave now. The routes icon is to the right of the words leave now.

If that doesn't work, follow these steps:

1. Google Google Maps
2. Click on Google Maps. It will be your first choice in the search results.
3. Mouse over the icon that looks like a the letter Y with an arrow coming out of the top of it and going to the right. The icon is the driving directions icon. When you mouse over it, it says Directions. The word directions is the tooltip.
4. Click on the driving directions icon. A dialog will open up that allows you to enter both a departure address and a destination address.
5. It's only after you've entered a departure point and a destination point that the routes icon appears. Remember! It's the thing that looks like a Chinese character that can't decide which way it is going.
6. Click on the routes icon.
7. Now checkmark tolls to turn off tolls.

I have a 95-year-old relative who cannot do anything that has more than 3 steps. I'm not sure she's even seen the Internet or the World Wide Web. She's certainly never been online.

While most of us are not 95, many us of prefer websites to be totally clear, if possible. Clarity is nice!

Ed Abbott

Great Driving Directions

I love great driving directions!
For this reason I'm starting this
blog. This is the first post.

There are 5 good sources of great
driving directions in my experience:

1. Google Maps
2. Mapquest
3. The website of the office
   or organization you are driving
   to.
4. A person giving verbal descriptions
   on the phone or in person
5. Driving directions sent via email
   or snail mail

I recently drove to the Portsmouth
Country Club in Portsmouth, New Hampshire.
I used Google Maps as my source for driving
directions.

When I googled Portsmouth Country Club,
Google gave me a link to click on that took
me to Google Maps. The link specifically said
Portsmouth Country Club.

I made a big mistake! I assumed that the link
was for the address of the Portsmouth Country
Club, but it was not. In fact, the link was
for a residential street that ended in a cul-
-de-sac.

What was funny was that I could see the Portsmouth
Country Club from the cul-de-sac. I was on one
side of a marsh and the country club was on the
other side of the marsh. I probably could have
gotten there had I had a Humvee and the water was
not too deep and the mud not too soft and the
marsh was not too full of channels. Getting
there and not getting too lost was my problem.

The event at the country club was a memorial
service for a woman I have known for over 30
years. I was 30 minutes late. That was not
too bad considering all the driving I did. I
had to stop and ask for directions twice.

Here's some of the things I could have done
to avoid this situation:

1. Make sure the street address for
   the Portsmouth Country Club was correct
2. Print out the directions from the
   Portsmouth Country Club website. Use
   these directions to supplement Google
   Maps
3. Get the GPS coordinates for the Portsmouth
   Country Club and use these. This assumes a
   GPS device. At present, I do not have GPS
   in any form. I'm behind the times.
4. Print out the email directions I was sent

There were a lot of things I could have done to
make this situation a better one. The problem
is I get moving too quickly and I become careless
about driving directions.

In general, I've found Google Maps to be excellent.
I was going on blind faith. I thought Google Maps
could do no wrong. Big mistake!

Of all the things I could have done to have prevented
this situation, the simplest of all would have been
to use the street address given on the contact page
of the Portsmouth Country Club. Had I done this one
simple thing, I would have discovered that Google
Maps was giving me two sets of directions.

One set of directions came up when I googled
Portsmouth Country Club. These were the
directions that were totally wrong. The other
set of directions, the correct ones, would have
been for the street address of the country club.

There's a life lesson in all of this for me. It
pays to take the time to get great directions, no
matter what you are doing.

So often, I've found that a little bit of research
pays handsome dividends. In general, I find that
careful research is almost never a waste of time.

I've reported the problem to Google Maps. Hopefully
they will fix this so that these bad driving directions
do not befuddle someone else.

Update: September 26, 2015

After I complained to Google Maps about their driving directions via their online complaint form, they wrote back and said they were going to fix the problem. They acknowledged I was right and told me that they were going to fix it.

It's nice to know that Google is willing to fix a mistake! While I've not formally checked to see if they fixed the problem, I assume they did.

Ed Abbott