Computing the Optimal Road Trip Across the US
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From: West Los Angeles, CA
Computing the Optimal Road Trip Across the US
A very interesting article about applying a route optimization algorithm to a desire to drive to all 48 contiguous states.
From the article:
http://www.randalolson.com/2015/03/0...cross-the-u-s/
From the article:
"Last week, Tracy Staedter from Discovery News proposed an interesting idea to me: Why not use the same algorithm from my Where’s Waldo article to compute the optimal road trip across every state in the U.S.? Visiting every U.S. state has long been on my bucket list, so I jumped on the opportunity and opened up my machine learning tool box for another quick weekend project."
You can skip all the technical stuff if you want and just jump to the end result. I opened all the Google Maps, adjusted one that made a skip into Canada, and added up the miles and hours. 14,198 miles and a total of 230.5 hours of driving. Now, that's just driving. Even if you could reasonably average 6 hours of drive time every day, it would take 39 days. This doesn't consider extended stops for vehicle service or inclimate weather, etc. But how cool of a trip would this be? Didn't Coop do something like this last year?http://www.randalolson.com/2015/03/0...cross-the-u-s/
Joined: Mar 2003
Posts: 45,924
Likes: 5,427
From: Loveland, CO
A very interesting article about applying a route optimization algorithm to a desire to drive to all 48 contiguous states.
From the article:
... 14,198 miles and a total of 230.5 hours of driving. Now, that's just driving. Even if you could reasonably average 6 hours of drive time every day, it would take 39 days. This doesn't consider extended stops for vehicle service or inclimate weather, etc. But how cool of a trip would this be? Didn't Coop do something like this last year?
http://www.randalolson.com/2015/03/0...cross-the-u-s/
From the article:
... 14,198 miles and a total of 230.5 hours of driving. Now, that's just driving. Even if you could reasonably average 6 hours of drive time every day, it would take 39 days. This doesn't consider extended stops for vehicle service or inclimate weather, etc. But how cool of a trip would this be? Didn't Coop do something like this last year?
http://www.randalolson.com/2015/03/0...cross-the-u-s/
Joined: Jan 2003
Posts: 10,868
Likes: 1,058
We did a cross country swing a couple years ago. I had Onstar plan the route. Our main rule was no freeways and when in doubt, take the prettier route. They did a great job. Trip was a little over 3 weeks. We found high quality empty 4 lanes all over the US. Most had no truck traffic and were never crowded. Scenic views, cool historical markers, neat old towns and some really good food that didn't come out of chain stores. Best part is its all on the federal highway system built before freeways.
Worked for us.
fltsfshr
Worked for us.
fltsfshr
Joined: Mar 2003
Posts: 45,924
Likes: 5,427
From: Loveland, CO
We did a cross country swing a couple years ago. I had Onstar plan the route. Our main rule was no freeways and when in doubt, take the prettier route. They did a great job. Trip was a little over 3 weeks. We found high quality empty 4 lanes all over the US. Most had no truck traffic and were never crowded. Scenic views, cool historical markers, neat old towns and some really good food that didn't come out of chain stores. Best part is its all on the federal highway system built before freeways.
Worked for us.
fltsfshr
Worked for us.
fltsfshr
Joined: Jun 2002
Posts: 30,134
Likes: 5,455
From: Bondville
I did a cross country trip in 2001. I was working with a guy from Estonia and we became friends and I told him how I had always wanted to driver c/c but none of my friends ever did so he said lets do it so we did. We got 2 weeks off from work rented a ford focus and made no reservations just grabbed a road atlas and took off it was a blast. We ended up going to Colorado for 2days then Sedona Arizona then the grand canyon,las vegas, los Angeles all through wine country, san fransico, the sierras, Moab Utah,reno Nevada,bonneville slatflats all in all we did 8100 miles in a little under two weeks. I highly recommend doing this definitely something I will always remember.
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