Online system may outdo the best map book

By Mike Leidemann
Advertiser Staff Writer

I love my trusty map books.

The upstart TMK O'ahu Street & Condo Map book from Rand McNally is valuable, too. It has colorful, easy-to-read maps with a well-organized format and index. It has been gaining ground on Bryan's, at least in my mind, for some time.

Now, there's a new kid on the block, so to speak. Like just about everything else, it's on the Internet and in some ways it's far more useful than Bryan's and TMK combined. It's called MapQuest, and if you're trying to figure out how to get from here to there, it might just be the best thing since backseat drivers.

MapQuest goes way beyond maps. It can give you mile-by-mile driving instructions — and it can do it with either the fastest or shortest routes or the one that keeps you off all highways. It can give you a total driving distance between two points and even estimate how long it will take to get there. You can print the routes, save them for future reference, e-mail them to someone else or download them to your PDA. In some cases, it will even give you an aerial picture of the area you're driving through.

MapQuest, as well as several Internet competitors, has found a lot of acceptance among Mainland drivers. It's especially useful if you are arriving in a strange city and looking for a particular address. When I first used MapQuest last year to drive from the Newark, N.J., airport to my sister's new home on the Jersey shore, it provided careful step-by-step driving instructions.

The test, though, is whether it will work way out here in the Pacific. So last week, I started putting MapQuest to the Honolulu challenge. It passed — with just a few glitches.

When I asked for driving directions from my Kailua home to my office on Kapi'olani Boulevard, it came back in seconds with a 12-step program that was almost the route I drive every day. It had the total distance (12.3 miles) right and the driving time (23 minutes) spot on, at least for a nonrush-hour trip.

The only difference between the directions and my normal drive was that MapQuest did not seem to recognize the ramp that leads from Pali Highway to H-1 Freeway and Punchbowl Street. Instead, the computer suggested that I drive straight into Downtown Honolulu, then turn left on King Street and Kapi'olani, which adds time and frustration to any commute.

When I tried the route in reverse, the computer again pretended that you couldn't use Punchbowl Street to get on the Pali Highway. Try telling that to the hundreds of people who are lined up there every afternoon.

Generally the system worked well. Over the course of a week I tried dozens of different routes and found few flaws. MapQuest didn't recognize some newly built streets in Mililani Mauka, but then neither does my 1981 Bryan's. When I tried to map a route from Hale'iwa to Hawai'i Kai, the system worked well until I typed in my final destination as 8902 Kalaniana'ole Highway, which the system couldn't find. However, it pointed me to a list of dozens of well-known landmarks and attractions in the area, including the Hawai'i Kai Golf Course, which was where I wanted to go. (The total driving time from Hale'iwa to Hawai'i Kai, by the way, is 1 hour and 1 minute, according to the computer).

The system also seemed to work well for Neighbor Islands, giving reasonable routes for driving from, say, Kihei to Lahaina, or Hilo to Kona. Only once did it balk.

When I tried to get driving directions between Wai'anae on O'ahu and Waimea on Kaua'i, I got a well-earned rebuke: "We are having trouble finding a route for your locations. Please try modifying the information you entered."

Apparently there are some highways you still can't drive, even on the Internet.

Mike Leidemann's Drive Time column appears every Tuesday. Reach him at 525-5460 or mleidemann@honoluluadvertiser.com.