I'm getting ready to take my first long trip in a long time. I'm going to be driving about 1000 miles from Chicago to Hilton Head Island. Even though my last car also had Navi, I never went more than about 150 miles.

My question involves routing and bypasses. Every major city has bypasses for the major interstates. An example would be here in the Chicago area, I294 is a bypass for I94. I94 goes right through downtown Chicago. You don't want to take that route unless you're actually going into the city.

So will the NAVI take advantage of these bypasses? Or will I have to route myself onto these bypasses manually and hope the NAVI figues out what I'm trying to do?

 

The easiest thing to do is see how the Navi wants you to go and then tell it to avoid certain roads. You can just tell it to avoid I94 and it will adjust to do that.

 

I'm not really sure that's a viable alternative. First, you eventually need to get back to I94. I294 comes off I94 and then joins back up with it at some point. Second, you sort of have to be familiar enough with your route to know there is a bypass available and tell it to avoid when you're close enough that it's not going to route you on some old 2 lane road instead.

 

Just direct the Navi to different way-points.... instead of going A to D, go A to B, B to C, C to D..

 

Well, it has been my experience that the Navi always directs you to the "biggest" roads, I guess you could say. That meaning, it usually sends you to whatever the best freeway is. If you cut out one freeway, it usually sends you to another one depending on where you are. I would guess that the bypass is in the system, unless it is really new. In that case, it will probably direct you to the bypass if you tell it to skip I94. But that's just my guess.

 

It's been my experience that it uses the bypass roads on the couple of longer trips I've taken--e.g. beltways around Baltimore & DC. In fact when I've wanted to do an alternate route through DC from VA to MD it fought very hard to send me to the beltway even though I knew traffic was really bad on it & the destination was just outside the DC boundary.

You can also look at routing options like maximize interstates. & what route does mapquest send you on for comaprison?

My problem with the navi is on its choices for local routes is not always what I would pick, but neither is mapquest. It's surprising how different the 2 can be when using the same highway information.

 

Well I'll be very curious to see how it does. We'll be leaving early Monday morning so we'll know in a few days.