Nuances of Google Maps

I had a bit of an adventure on my new commute this morning.

Basically, I have a long commute with a choice of routes: Take I-95 and pay its associated tolls, or take I-80 to I-287 and pay almost no tolls. The latter is longer by about ten miles and fifteen to thirty minutes - but multiplied out over five days a week, four weeks a month, it saves me about $300 in tolls. So, that's my preferred route.

There are a lot of switches to get through on the way, and while I'm still learning them, I rely on Google Maps to guide me (sidebar: I've tested against other mapping and routing services, and might write them up later - Google's working out the best). I've taken to looking at traffic on my computer at home, and then "send to iPhone" to get the play-by-play up on my dashboard.

A couple of times now, once for work and once for another destination, I've selected the route I want, sent to phone, and then blindly followed instructions before realizing Google is not sending me on the route I wanted.  I finally spent some time figuring out why.

Basically, Google Maps does not send the route. It seems to send your start and end points, and if you've checked a route pref, includes that. The details I tested:

In Chrome at home with no route prefs selected. Choose the non-fastest route and send to phone. On the phone, the fastest route displays.

In Chrome at home, with 'avoid tolls' selected, the route I want is the default. Send to phone, that route route displays.

Just for fun, in Chrome at home, with 'avoid tolls' selected, the route I normally want is the default. Select the 'fastest' route (i.e. with tolls) and send to fold. The default (i.e. avoid tolls) route displays.

Finally, just for fun, I tried toggling the route options in Google Maps on my iPhone. If I send a route that has no prefs selected, the phone's prefs will be in effect. However if I select a pref in Chrome and send that to Google Maps, the original prefs seem to be in effect.

So, it seems that when Chrome sends a route to my phone, it will send along prefs that I selected, and the start and end point, but otherwise I may as well be starting over.

More thorough testing would clear the behavior up more definitively. For now, this explains some of the "Google on crack" trips I've had.