Travel times on map?

[Daniel Peter]

I'd like to plot a route from Atlanta to Sacramento and simply want to land a pin every 12 hours or so of driving time. Is there a way to see the travel times between waypoints on the map? These show on Apple Maps but I haven't seen a setting to have them display on RTP.

My desire is to be able to adjust the pins along the route to get the ideal spacing of overnight stops.

[Kyle Modesitt]

Hi Daniel,

You can view the travel time(s) once you place at least two pins and click “Update Routes.” The travel time between Atlanta, GA, and Sacramento, CA, is about 36 hours. If you want to drive 12 hours at a time, you can place two intermediate pins equidistant along the route line, then click “Update Routes” again. For example, the 2nd pin can be Oklahoma City, OK, and the 3rd pin can be Flagstaff, AZ. The travel times can be viewed for each pin under the Travel Time column in the Route Pins list. You can view the default and alternative route travel times under the Routes tab.

You can fine-tune the location of an existing pin by drag-and-dropping the pin on the map, or by clicking the “Relocate Route Pin” button below the Route Pins list.

When you click “Update Routes,” it will update the arrival and departure dates/times to account for the updated travel times. To enter and lock-in a certain departure time for each pin so that it corresponds to the following morning and is unaffected by updates in travel time, select a pin, select the Dates tab, customize the Departure date and time, and select “Time Locked” from the drop-down menu.

If you have additional questions or comments or need clarification, please let us know.

Best,

Kyle

Road Trip Planner

Modesitt Software - Kyle and Bill

On Apr 26, 2025, at 6:51 AM, Daniel Peter <beebl...@gmail.com> wrote:

I'd like to plot a route from Atlanta to Sacramento and simply want to land a pin every 12 hours or so of driving time. Is there a way to see the travel times between waypoints on the map? These show on Apple Maps but I haven't seen a setting to have them display on RTP.

My desire is to be able to adjust the pins along the route to get the ideal spacing of overnight stops.

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[Daniel Peter]

Okay, thanks. Was hoping for Apple Maps-like functionality (showing travel time between waypoints on the map itself).

We do a ~7000 mile road trip every summer from the east coast to the west coast and back.  What I was looking for with RTP was:

- easily see travel times on the map between pins

- search for things like say, all Love's Travel Stops within the field of view (I just get an error when I search for things like parks or truck stops)

- ability to return to a pre-calculated route without the app doing a re-calculation  en though I've already done it once.

I see that adding notes and being able to save trips is a plus and for that, I will find RTP useful.

[Kyle Modesitt]

Hi Daniel,

RTP does not currently have the functionality to show travel times on the map above each route segment, but we will consider adding that feature in a future update, dependent on whether Apple’s API supports it and how difficult it may be to implement.

RTP is able to search for known POIs within the field of view. For example, I zoomed in to Denver, CO, clicked on the “Add Route Pin” button, typed in “park”, and a couple dozen options displayed. Alternatively, you can specify a region in the search field instead of needing to zoom in to that region on the map. For example, you can type in “park in Denver” while looking at Oklahoma or while zoomed out to the continental US, and the search will still return locations of parks in Denver.

If you still get an error when making a search, please share screenshots so we can try to figure out what’s going wrong.

With respect to automating or reverting to calculated routes, this is generally difficult or not possible due to how Apple Maps servers process requests.

In the Apple Maps app, each change of a location pin or leave/arrival time initiates a re-calculation of the travel route, as well as updating every few minutes when it's displaying a real-time route. This works fine for Apple, due to most people usually only having one or two destinations to calculate routes for, and no need for reverting to previous routes.  RTP also sends a request to the Apple Maps servers for the route between each route pin, but RTP users tend to have many more destinations to calculate routes for.  For example, ten route pins (round-trip) means ten route requests. This results in more than ten routes due to each route request also calculating alternate routes.

If Apple Maps servers receive too many route requests from a user, the user's routes are “throttled,” meaning you have to wait awhile or restart Road Trip Planner before the servers will respond again.  From our experience, if more than 50 routes are displayed within one minute, you may see the warning.  If you have fewer routes but display them often, you may get the same message.  If you have over 50 routes and receive the error, wait at least 60 seconds and then select Update Last Routes from the View drop-down menu.

The Update Last Routes button (or ⌘R) adds missing route segments for newly added route pins, so it reduces the number of route requests sent at a time.

You can also view your Itinerary as a reference. It includes a static map of all your pins and travel route, and has a manual update button.

I’m glad you’re liking our other features :) . That is quite a large road trip! Do you have favorite places to visit, or do you change it up every time?

Best,

Kyle

Road Trip Planner

Modesitt Software - Kyle and Bill

To view this discussion visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/road-trip-planner/da3cd4f2-7f31-48f2-999e-ac5bc20233b3n%40googlegroups.com.

[Daniel Peter]

Hi Kyle,

Thanks for the prompt response.

The POI search function isn't implemented as a user would hope so please consider this for future version.

Scenario: search for state parks within the current map view - specifically looking along a planned route like Interstate 40.

When you do this with Apple Maps you would see something like this:

With RTP what I get is a list of names and/or addresses from which I can pick a single one. But candidly, this list is kind of useless for areas that are unknown to the traveller. There isn't any way to know if the address is near Interstate 40 or not. 

And as you can see below, RTP offers suggestions of towns with the name "Park" as well as other locations outside the field of view of the map in places like New York, California, and Oregon. On this list I see only one state park that is within the field of view while Apple maps returns dozens of state park hits.

RTP:

There is a "Go" link at the top of this screen but tapping there only gives me a random list of addresses closer to where I live and none of them have anything to do with state parks or the area I was zoomed into on the map. So I'm unsure what the intention of the "Go" link is for.

Thanks for any clarification you can provide as to a way to find state parks or other points of interest along a route.

Dan

[Kyle Modesitt]

Hi Dan,

This link describes how to display any type of waypoint along your route. It requires more steps than the other option below, but I think the end result is closer to what you’re requesting.

https://roadtripplanner.modesittsoftware.com/Road_Trip_Planner/Starbucks.html

For a simpler option, this describes how to search for waypoints around a pin.

1. Tap on a pin on the map.
2. Tap on the ‘i’ to open the detailed view.
3. Tap on the Places (fork-and-knife) icon.
4. Search for something and tap 'search.’
5. It will show a map with the route pin and all the search results around it.

https://roadtripplanner.modesittsoftware.com/Road_Trip_Planner/Places.html

Thank you for your feedback, we will look into expanding and streamlining RTP's waypoints search capabilities.

Best,

Kyle

Road Trip Planner

Modesitt Software - Kyle and Bill

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[Daniel Peter]

This is good to know.

- Option #1 not only looks very complicated to the point of being impractical, but also not something that can be done from an iPad.

- Option #2 is a bit more like it, though still cumbersome. It also doesn't return nearly as many results since they seem to be confined to a limited distance from the waypoint pin initially chosen. When doing searches for things like campgrounds or truck stops in Apple Maps, once you have text entered in the search field, you can move the map around and it will update the map with new results.

In order for me to find POIs like state parks or lakes along my route , it does look like the most do-able is to first use Apple Maps to find things like truck stops, as AM has a very simple and straight-forward way of finding such POIs. Then I would transfer the chosen ones back over to RTP by copying and pasting the address from one app to the other.

One thing I haven't found is a way to transfer pins back over to Apple Maps in order to see the travel times on the map itself. Yes, there is a method to export waypoints from RTP to Apple Maps but the resulting pins don't behave the way native waypoints do in Apple Maps (unless I'm missing something).

[Kyle Modesitt]

Hi Dan,

TLDR: In the meantime, yes, the easiest thing would be to use Apple Maps for finding POIs and copying the location to RTP.

While option #1 does require more effort up-front, it is available on iPad:

1. On your iPad, do a Google search for a .gpx file that includes waypoints you’re interested in.
2. Download the .gpx file and save it to your iPad’s downloads folder or to your iCloud Drive. For reference, the saved file is accessible in Apple’s Files app.
3. Open RTP, tap on the GPX button on the bottom toolbar, second from the right. Tap “Import from the Cloud,” and customize the import however you like.

How to view your RTP route pins in Apple Maps as ’native’ waypoints:

1. In the AM menu, expand the Library widget, tap “Guides,” and tap “+” at the bottom to create a new Guide.
2. In RTP, tap the "Share" button in the bottom right corner, and tap “Send all route pins to Apple Maps.”
3. In AM, tap on your first route pin, tap the “… More” button, tap “Add to Guides,” tap on your new Guide, and tap “Save."
1. Repeat for each remaining route pin.
4. Now all your pins are viewable in AM by viewing your Guide.

You may ask, "Why doesn’t Apple Maps automatically process the route pins imported from RTP into a Guide?” That is because AM is finicky and/or AM just doesn’t have that ability. But, the above steps are tedious, so we are still looking for ways to fully automate these processes.

How to view a route of all your RTP route pins in Apple Maps:

1. Open your Guide, tap on your starting route pin, and tap “Directions.”
2. Tap your next route pin on the map, and tap “Add Stop.”
1. Repeat for each remaining route pin.
3. Now you can view all your RTP route pins in AM with a route time overlay.

You may ask, “Why isn’t there a button to easily create a route using the waypoints in my Apple Maps Guide?” I don’t know. I suggest sending that feedback to Apple: https://www.apple.com/feedback/maps-ios-ipados.html

End result (using the RTP sample file):

In respect to RTP limitations and other Apple Maps features:

We use Apple’s MapKit for the map display, route calculations, waypoint searches, etc. Apple decides which Apple Maps features to provide to app developers and whether to provide full or limited functionality, which restricts what we are able to do. Despite this, we continue to investigate further on how/whether we can add the above features to RTP.

Best,

Kyle

Road Trip Planner

Modesitt Software - Kyle and Bill

To view this discussion visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/road-trip-planner/49766feb-ef08-4e50-8074-4a5b38fae6cfn%40googlegroups.com.