On 2007.Jan.25 I saw a news story about flooding in the town of San Anselmo, and I was curious where that was located, so I tried to get driving directions from where I reside to there, in the hope of then following the directions on a printed map to see where the town was located geographically:
Yahoo Maps - used to work, but no longer works today
mapquest - tried it first time today, doesn't work at all
randmcnally - tried it first time today, doesn't work at all
maps.com - tried it first time today, doesn't work at all
maps.google.com - tried it first time today, doesn't work at all
mapsonus.com - tried it first time today, doesn't recognize San Francisco, CA as destination.
Update May.22: I tried various destinations, Corralitos, Los Gatos, Sunnyvale,
even tried a specific address in Sunnyvale, but none of
the destinations were recognized. As far as I can tell, this Web site
is absolutely and totally broken, completely non-functional.
freetrip.com - Works!! Told me how to get to San Anselmo
Update 2008.May.22: Doesn't give correct driving
directions to Corralitos (near the large wildfire that started this
morning about 6AM). It says from state highway 17 in Santa Cruz, take state
highway 1 to the East for 20 KM, and you have arrived at Corralitos.
Correct directions are to drive only 8 miles (13 KM) on highway 1,
then turn North then East again along Freedom Blvd for 4 miles (6 KM)
then continue
to Hames Road for 1.5 miles (2 KM). However the incorrect
directions were sufficient for me to visually scan across a regional
map to spot the correct location. Corralitos is in fact almost exactly
20 KM almost due East from the highway intersection in Santa Cruz. It's
just that highway 1 veers southward from a due-East line, and you have
to turn onto the other roads to get back to due-East from Santa Cruz.
That's why looking at the map with bad directions was easy to find
the town, when my eyes scanned due east instead of following the highway.
2009.Aug.09: I tried to find route between two places in Sunnyvale, and
it didn't work at all.
.
Shows only part of the correct route, ending 13 miles
East along state highway 1 from intersection of highway
17, i.e. near Rio Del Mar, at the intersection with
Freedom Blvd. The route along Freedom Blvd and Hames Rd
between Rio Del Mar and Corralitos is entirely missing.
.
Update 2011.Apr.20: Can't connect to this website any more.
superpages.com - When I enter the destination as Corralitos, CA, then click on SUBMIT, it shows the destination as Santa Cruz instead. But the directions appear to be correct to Corralitos, including subtle changes in road names not shown on my regional map that was published in 1964.
mapblast.com - Totally broken!! The search result from Google points to the map page which isn't the same as the driving-directions page, so I wasted several minutes looking over that form before I found the link for directions. Then once I got there, already exhausted, there was a big complicated form to fill out, which distracted me from looking for the SUBMIT button before taking the time to fill out the form. In fact there's no SUBMIT button, so there's no way to submit the form. Just below the detailed part of the form for the destination there's plain text [BUTTON], apparently where the submit button should be but isn't.
maps.aol.com -
With just cities (Sunnyvale, CA to Corralitos, CA):
There is not enough information to determine your starting location.
There is not enough information to determine your destination.
With street addresses at both ends, still the same error message.
kivera.com - Completely unusable because there's no SUBMIT button on the form. (Fortunately I had the presence of mind to look for the SUBMIT button before filling out the form, so I wasted only a half minute there and a minute or so typing this up here.)
funandsafedriving.com - Given just starting and ending cities+states, it refuses to even try. Error message says "Please provide starting and destination addresses as detailed as you can". But filling in more detailed info still fails. This Web site is useless.
alaskaair.com -
Works correctly!! In particular the last part of the
directions, from Santa Cruz by freeway to Rio Del Mar
then on small roads to Corralitos look very precise.:
9. Take Ramp (RIGHT) onto SR-1 [Cabrillo Hwy] 8.46
10. Turn RIGHT onto Ramp 0.29
11. Turn LEFT (East) onto Freedom Blvd 2.71
12. Keep LEFT onto Hames Rd 0.63
13. Turn RIGHT (South) onto Pleasant Valley Rd, then immediately turn
LEFT (East) onto Hames Rd 1.53
14. Road name changes to Browns Valley Rd 0.66
15. Arrive End 0
Update 2009.Aug.08: It no longer works at all. When I fill in starting and
ending addresses, and press submit button, it just takes me back to same
form with same contents already filled in. Clicking submit button does
same.
cnn.com -
It has the option of text only, which I selected. Yet when I clicked
the SUBMIT button, it brought me to an error message that said:
Sorry! When printing directly from the browser your map may be
incorrectly cropped. To print the
entire map, try clicking the "Printer-Friendly" link at the top of
your results page.
You must have Javascript and Cookies turned on to view all MapQuest
features. Find out more information ;
You must have Javascript and Cookies turned on to view all MapQuest
features. Find out more information ;
For an alleged "text only" mode, it is awfully
formatted, although technically correct. Here's the complete
so-called "text only"
result page. I tried clicking on the Printer-Friendly link, but that gave
me almost as bad a mess here.
.
Update 2011.Sep.01: I tried getting directions from my residence to another
address in Sunnyvale, but it didn't work at all, not even one step of
the route shown.
At present there's not a single known WebSite that provides driving directions. The only way to get that info would seem to be to use geocoder to get latitude&longitude at each end and look on a physical map to figure out the route myself.