Well, this world “moves on without me” . . . and the CD-ROM trip-planning mapping I used some years ago has disappeared off into the ether, as it were.
Since my approach to tech-life is to stay as far away as I possibly, knowably can from Google’s arrogant, aggressively invasive, intrusive, and imposing business model, I recognize that my options can be limited. Nonetheless . . .
For the past number of years my go-to trip-planning/information program was the basic Bing map – it did everything I needed (which, from reviewing where this world has moved on to, was quite simple and sufficient for me). Disappointingly, Bing-world has decided it needed to keep-running-with-the-crowd-which-believes-more-and-more-new-bells-n-whistles (yes, AI, you stand accused!) are better.
All I needed was an on-line program where I could
enter an address point (to merely locate somewhere), then
add a second address (“directions” function),
add/insert additional addresses/stop points if desired, and
(most importantly for my way of doing things) click on a way-point icon showing on the route that resulted and
drag that/those onto a different route option, should I choose (usually because this order of events was the quickest and cleanest means of gaining the information I wanted).
All of the programs I’ve been sniffing-out offer a “quickest route” outcome (which is often useful enough), but lack the simple means of dragging one or more route icons/points if I want a route to (a) simply be made more interesting and/or (b) make comparison routes for consideration.
Any thoughts out there in ForumLand that might help me find what I’m wanting?
Graphhopper lets you enter multiple stop points and drag them across the map.
The OSM wiki lists other routing software options. If you have more specific routing needs, like up-to-date public transport info or flatter terrain for biking, people might recommend more specific routing software.
Why is the data sometimes inconsistent?
“OpenStreetMap is a free editable map of the whole world. It is made by people like you.” Which means the database will always be subject to the whims, experimentation, and mistakes of the community; this is precisely OSM’s strength since, among other things, it allows our data to quickly accommodate changes in the physical world.
In OpenStreetMap it is normal that one town is mapped in extreme detail, another has mapped road and bicycle infrastructure and nothing else while another is not mapped at all (for now!).
cartes.app allows you to add multiple locations/stops and then drag the order you would like it to route you in. It also provides multiple routing options if there are 2-3 other routes that would make sense to travel.
The only problem I’m noticing right now is that it seems like there’s a recently introduced bug on the website when attempting to add more than 1 route that causes the page to crash.
This is fixed now.