If last summer’s driving vacation was bogged down by road construction, traffic tie-ups, and wrong turns, consider a quick trip into cyberspace before you leave home. Motorists can now access the kind of real-time, up-to-the-minute road and traffic information that was once the commodity of traffic reporters and auto clubs.
General:National Geographic Trip Planner (http://www.nationalgeographic.com/
cdrom/tripplanner/intro.html) provides links to local weather and road conditions, news, dining, lodging, visitor information and entertainment for cities in the United States and Canada.
Traffic:SmarTraveler (www.smartraveler.com) posts the latest accident reports, road conditions, and construction bulletins for 11 metropolitan regions in the U.S., including Boston, Chicago, Houston, Los Angeles, and Washington, D.C. You can navigate interactive road maps, find out the average traffic speed on major routes at a given time, see if tunnels are clear, even get a bird’s-eye view from live traffic cameras for a look at roadside tie-ups. Also try the U.S. Department of Transportation’s list of state DOT sites (www.dot.gov/internet/usadots.html) or the Princeton Directory of Transportation Resources (www.sor.princeton.edu/~dhb/systems.html), with links to hundreds of city and state traffic and transit sites in an array of locales, from Cascade Mountain passes to Pennsylvania and Ohio turnpikes.
Travelers planning to drive in Europe can check in first with the Automobile Association U.K. (www.theaa.co.uk), which posts traffic and construction advisories for the United Kingdom and the Continent.
Maps: Though no substitute for a folding road map, a number of mapping sites allow you to generate basic maps and thorough driving directions for any U.S. route. The software is clumsy at times. But Web sites like MapBlast! (www.mapblast.com), MapQuest (www.mapquest.com), and MapsOnUs (www.mapsonus.com) hit their mark by illustrating street-by-street driving directions—even turn-by-turn—and by alerting you to potential backups and any detours due to roadwork.
Weather: For a look at local weather and temperatures along your route, check out the Weather Channel (www.weather.com), which provides current driving conditions and forecasts along U.S. interstates.
Finally, if your last road trip got you a big reminder to slow down, take a look at the WWW Speedtrap Registry (www.speedtrap.com) for a list of speed traps in the U.S. and abroad.
