Google has released a new Maps feature that allows you plan routes that avoid freeways and major interstate highways in favor of quainter, though possibly longer, routes. Beside the driving directions on Google Maps is a new checkbox that reroutes your directions sans interstate.
Though the Google LatLong blog spins the features as a kind of Robert Frostian alternative navigation system, this could be genuinely useful for folks living in major metropolitan areas where clogged freeways can turn a ten minute trip across town into a rage-inducing two-hour stress-fest.
The new “avoid highways” feature also works with the recently introduced MyMaps customization tool, so you can plan and retrace your more interesting routes.
As with all the directions handed out by Google Maps, take the highwayless routes with a grain of salt. For instance the search below does indeed give a highwayless route from Athens GA to Charleston SC, however, knowing the area, there's a much shorter and faster route that also avoids highways. And of course directions from Google Maps are never a good substitute for real maps and advice from local inhabitants.
Hopefully at some point this functionality will be part of the Maps API, but for the moment Google Earth has the only routing API available to developers.
[via the Google LatLong Blog]
Athens to Charleston via the highway.
The same route sans interstates
