Dear Maps team,

Please don’t route me onto a dirt road again. It was super un-fun. I ended up going back up to I-80 and heading over to Wyoming from Nebraska, adding another state and about 5 hours to my trip including the not-joy of I-25 rush hour traffic instead of the much quieter I-76 through Fort Morgan.

It was impossible to get any live data from said dirt road so I just went with my gut until I could get directions again, which took about 2 hours, placing me just outside Cheyenne.

Navigation through Nebraska is always horrible horrible horrible, usually just blank tiles until I hit either Colorado or South Dakota. When going state to state, I’d like to cache tiles along several possible routes because with so much highway construction, I don’t want to be caught with blank tiles in the middle of Nebraska when I have to go twenty or forty miles off to the left or right to avoid a road that isn’t roading at the moment.

Caching tiles and directions along many possible routes would have helped the whole dirt road fiasco. The no-data-no-tiles-no-rerouting trap is both unsafe and unpleasant. Plus it made me miss Sidney, NE, with the only truck stop I’ve ever encountered in the United States that offered bidets (!) in their bathrooms. A true tourist’s experience.

While I’m venting, please respect my wishes about “No tolls” or “No highways” for my entire trip, even if I take a slight detour to avoid traffic. Forgetting “Show me how to get to [Someplace] avoiding tolls” when I reroute cost me  unnecessary funds recently by putting me onto 470, aka the hell road. I was properly billed (thankfully!) and paid immediately but no one voluntarily drives on E470.

Maps folk, please let me say “Show me how to get to Colombia, MO avoiding tolls and dirt roads” and remember that request until I’m safely at my destination. And let me add those requests as I’m driving. During rush hour, let me say “Hey, let’s get off the highways until I’m close to 225”. That’s totally doable from a programming point of view.

Speaking of slight detours, I generally know better than Maps how to tweak directions within the first few miles of my home. For example, I prefer to take the relatively quiet 13th and 14th streets from downtown instead of Colfax or 6th. There’s an incredibly unsafe left turn near our house that Maps always recommends. I drive a little further and make a safe U-turn at a light with a dedicated left turn signal.

I do these tweaks near my home all the time and Maps shouldn’t be fighting me on this, announcing updated directions every single block. I’d like a setting that limits any directions at all (after the initial announcement) for the first, say, mile or two or three away from my home or other “known” starting points that I could add to a list.

In fact, I know how to get to many major milestones within the greater Denver metropolitan area like 225 and Vasquez, and Hampden and 25, and Colorado and 70. I’d like to be able to have navigation kick off once  I’m near a known point or I’m close to the highway or fairly far along towards my destination. That shouldn’t be too hard to develop and customize, requiring no in-car interaction so it’s safe.

In many cases, I only need last mile assistance when driving in-city, including other cities I’m familiar with like Colorado Springs and Fort Collins. I wish I could ask for a “guide me when I’m close to” setting for these kinds of navigation requests.

Thank you all. You know I appreciate everything you do!