Find This Site and You Won’t Be a Lost Cause

On the Web, there are refuges for guys who have trouble asking directions.

They are not support groups or bulletin boards where one can share stories of driving around aimlessly for hours. No, these dream sites for guys with direction asking disorders (DADs) are door-to-door, route map services.

Before leaving home, you simply bring up one of these sites, enter the exact street address where you are starting (it can be almost any address in the continental United States) and the address of your destination.

You click on a button and in a few seconds, up pop complete, turn-by-turn directions and maps to help you navigate. You can easily print them out and be on your way.

We tested three of these advertising-supported sites--Mapquest (https://www.mapquest.com), Maps On Us (https://www.mapsonus.com) and Zip2 (https://www.zip2.com)--by asking each to find the fastest route from the downtown Times headquarters to the newspaper’s San Fernando Valley office.

All the routes got us from the downtown office to a freeway leading to the Valley, and then back on city streets to reach our destination. Two of the routes, from Mapquest and Zip2, were exactly the same, mapping out directions that got us from start to end point in 27.1 miles.

The Maps On Us route was slightly different, totaling 27.3 miles.

To those of us familiar with the roadways of L.A., neither of the two routings was perfect. Both got off the freeway a bit too soon, neglecting to take advantage of the exit closest to the destination.

But either of them would get you there just fine. And the fact that they were so close to the directions that might have come from an L.A. native is astonishing, considering that these sites cover the entire country.

I confess that I at times have trouble asking directions, but I did want to ask someone in the know how these amazing sites work.

“When you put in an address, the computer assigns it a geocode, based on longitude and latitude,” said Lauri Blake, marketing manager for the Denver-based Mapquest, which was the first of the online routing sites. Then the program looks for the most direct route, using the fastest roadways available, to get from geocode to geocode.

The map and street address information it uses was purchased from several sources, but mainly from Navigation Technologies, a Silicon Valley company that specializes in gathering and digitizing mapping info. “They prioritize the streets and roads, so we can send people on the fastest routes,” Blake said.

The mapping company also updates its information several times a year. “They actually have people who spend their days driving around, checking on new streets and changes or closures.”

(Zip2 also uses Navigation Technologies information, which might explain why it and Mapquest’s routes were identical).

For Alaska, Hawaii and all of Canada, Mapquest now does city-to-city routing. Eventually, they hope to do the same for all of Europe.

So, all you with DADs are now safer from having to admit to a perfect stranger that you have lost your way. But in the event you change travel plans and have no computer handy, Mapquest and the others can’t help you.

Those with extreme cases might have to get a laptop and cellular connection to the Internet.

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Cyburbia’s e-mail address is david.colker@latimes.com.