Author: James Harrington
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How Elevation Affects Travel Time and Fuel Efficiency (Calculator Included)
Most of us punch our destination into a mapping app and trust it to guide us. But here’s a dirty little secret: those apps often ignore elevation changes. Flat or hilly, they treat every mile the same. In reality, climbing a mountain pass burns more fuel and takes longer than cruising along a coastal highway.…
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How We Might Make City Traffic Smarter
We’ve all felt it – that collective groan as thousands of us try to squeeze through the same bottlenecks at the same time, day after day. It’s inefficient, frustrating, and costly in more ways than one. And the hard truth? Just building wider roads often falls victim to “induced demand” – basically, the new space…
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Driving Abroad: Route Planning Tips When You’re Not on Home Turf
Driving in a foreign country can feel like a high-stakes video game. The rules are vague, the signs are in a different language, and the locals seem to navigate it all with telepathic ease. Whether you’re cruising the Autobahn or dodging scooters in Southeast Asia, planning your route abroad requires more than plugging an address…
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Shortest vs Fastest Routes
Should you follow the “shortest” route or the “fastest” route? You tap in your destination, the map app does its whirring and thinking, and boom – often you get a couple of options. They look similar, maybe one saves you 10 miles but adds 15 minutes, or vice versa. What gives? And more importantly, which…
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Flat Maps, Big Lies: Why Greenland Isn’t Bigger Than Africa
Think about our planet – it’s a sphere (well, technically an oblate spheroid, but let’s stick with sphere for simplicity). Now, imagine trying to take the peel off an orange and lay it perfectly flat on a table without stretching, tearing, or squashing any part of it. You can’t do it! Cartographers face exactly the…
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Using Past Traffic Patterns for a Smoother Road Trip
Ever get that sinking feeling when you round a bend and see nothing but brake lights, thinking, “Ugh, I knew this stretch would be bad right now”? It happens to all of us. But what if you could sidestep some of that predictable gridlock just by planning a little smarter? Understanding typical traffic patterns is…
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Figuring Out How Long That Drive Actually Takes
You know how it goes: you plug your destination into Google Maps or Waze, it spits out “3 hours, 15 minutes,” and you think, “Great!” Then, somehow, it takes you closer to four and a half hours. Sound familiar? Figuring out realistic driving times is one of the trickiest parts of road trip planning, but…
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The Best Snacks For Long Drives
A road trip without good snacks is like… well, it’s just not as good. Hitting the open road is fantastic, but hanger (hunger + anger) is real, especially when you’re stuck in traffic or hours from the next decent stop. Relying solely on whatever the next exit offers can lead to overpriced, unsatisfying choices that…
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Smart Tips to Avoid Driving Fatigue
Okay, let’s talk about something really important for any road trip that goes beyond a couple of hours: driving fatigue. It sounds boring, maybe even obvious, but trust me, it sneaks up on you, and it’s not just about feeling a bit sleepy – it’s genuinely dangerous. It dulls your reaction time, messes with your…
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Where is the Middle? The Many “Centers of the World”
Humans seem to have an innate desire to find the center of things. It gives us a point of reference, a sense of order in a vast space. We talk about the “heartland,” the “downtown core,” or even the “center of attention.” But when we try to pin down the actual center of a geographic…
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Plan a Little, Enjoy More: A Practical Guide to Road Trip Planning
So, the idea of a road trip is fantastic. Open roads, changing scenery, discovering new places – it has a real appeal. But we’ve probably all had moments on the road that were less than ideal: that worry about finding gas in the middle of nowhere, backtracking because of a missed turn, or getting stuck…
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Route Planning for Emissions
We all know gas isn’t getting any cheaper, and sitting in traffic is nobody’s idea of a good time. We plan where we’re going, but maybe we don’t always think enough about how we’re getting there – specifically, the route itself. Big companies like UPS and Amazon spend heaps of time and money figuring out…
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How to Read Topographic Maps Without Getting Lost in the Lines
We’ve all been there: staring at a trailhead, wondering if that path is a gentle stroll or a thigh-burning nightmare. Topographic maps are your cheat code to the wild, turning a mess of hills and valleys into a plan you can actually follow. Those weird lines and cryptic numbers reveal the land’s secrets, but to…
