A moment or two later here’s what it displays: Now Google Maps can work backwards since it knows where I am now, where I want to go and when I want to arrive.

Choose that option and you’ll be able to choose and specify, as desired: You can specify route options, like no tollways, add a stop, share directions, etc, but what we want is the third choice: “ Set departure or arrive time”.

” on the top right of the screen and a menu of options appears that you’ve probably never noticed:.

But what if I don’t need to get there until 5pm instead of 3:22pm? HOW TO SPECIFY DEPARTURE OR ARRIVAL TIME

To get directions, all I need to do is tap on the big blue “ Directions” button. It’s that first one, and even without leaving the search tool, you can see that it’s 9.8 miles away, while Beyond Components is only 1.6mi away and Beyond Thai Massage? Well, if I were intending to head there, it’s only 3.6 miles away.Ī tap on “Beyond the Mountain Brewing Co.” and I get confirmation of the location and more information on the venue:Ĥ 1/2 stars? Opens soon? 22 minutes by car? All of that’s tucked onto the very bottom of the view. A search for “Beyond” in Google Maps on my iPhone running iOS 15.6 shows that as one of my options: I’m sitting at a coffee shop in Broomfield, Colorado and need to get to the Beyond the Mountain brewpub in Boulder, about 10 miles away. If I want to arrive at 5.00pm exactly, it can recognize that there’s going to be more traffic than usual at that time of day and give me a departure time that compensates. Google Maps offers both the ability to specify when you want to leave and, even more interestingly, when you want to arrive, and then uses historical data to estimate your arrival / departure time (depending on which other time you specify). It’s a lot of data to sift through, but it’s surprisingly easy to compare a drive from, say, San Mateo to Monterey at 4.30am on a Sunday versus 4.30pm on a Friday afternoon. This is done by having millions of data points – we’re all reporting our location and transit information as we move around – but also by having a huge dataset of historical traffic information too. They can even indicate how much extra time the accident a mile ahead is going to add to your journey. Starting with driving directions that offered no estimate of how long your journey would actually take, navigational systems have gained enormously in sophistication and it’s astonishing how well they can now route you around traffic and construction.

Free driving directions google maps