Mapping your drive

Have you been frustrated with the directions provided by different web mapping sites? I discovered this morning that Google Maps (http://maps.google.com/) will let you change your driving route to check alternatives.

Example: you use Google Maps to see the route from Dallas to San Antonio, but you get a phone call saying that the meeting is now going to be held in Houston. You'll see various little dots on the blue line that you can grab with your cursor and drag over to another route. So, you can drag your route from I-35 to I-45. It even recalculates the miles and time for you. Neat!

State of the nation's bridges

Sabrina Pacifici has put together a list of documents relating to the status of US bridges in a post on her BeSpacific.com blog. It includes the National Bridge Inventory, Federal Highway Administration records, and selected news stories.

http://www.bespacific.com/mt/archives/015618.html

Commuter survey

The U.S. Census Bureau News Service has a news release with the summary of a 2005 survey on commuting. It looks like most Americans still drive to work alone.

Most of Us Still Drive to Work – Alone
Public Transportation Commuters Concentrated in a Handful of Large Cities

Despite rising fuel costs, commuters continued to drive their cars in 2005, according to a new U.S. Census Bureau analysis of data from the American Community Survey. The survey, gathered over the course of the year, found that driving to work was the favored means of commute of nearly nine out of 10 workers (87.7 percent), with most people (77 percent) driving alone.