Just a few examples of the benefits of sharing:

• Kid’s ballgame across town? Share maps to the field with their teammate’s parents
• Discover an awesome new spot for Asian food? Alert the Twittersphere!
• On a business trip? Pick a place to meet with clients and text your location to colleagues
• On vacation with the family? Tell your Facebook friends about the amazing resort you found using MapQuest Discover and booked on MapQuest.com

To share a location, simply touch the map, route marker or location pin and the new “Share” icon will appear on the left side of the info box. Select that icon, and then follow the prompts to send a link using email, text messaging, Facebook or Twitter. Once sent, the links can be opened in MapQuest.com on a desktop computer, or directly in our mobile apps – which allows the recipient to easily route from their current location. If the iPhone or Android app is not yet downloaded, we’ll show a message and link right to the App Store or Google Play.

This is just a start, and we will be expanding sharing options soon. Like our latest traffic feature that automatically re-routes you around traffic jams, sharing is just one of many innovations on our roadmap designed to help you get around and stay in touch – no matter how you live, work, and play.

Download our free iPhone or Android app today – and don’t be afraid to share!

As always, let us know what you think on Twitter or Facebook.

With our latest releases of the flagship MapQuest apps now in the App Store and Google Play, we can now check traffic conditions every few minutes as you traverse your route, and adjust on-the-fly. You don’t need to do anything: if congestion is detected and we can find a faster way around it, we’ll re-route automatically and notify you using a simple spoken instruction. You can keep your hands on the wheel and eyes on the road.

We think drivers will love the benefits of this feature: saving time and gas, reducing aggravation, and finding alternate routes even in familiar areas (try it on your commute!). And if you prefer to just crank the tunes and wait for the congestion to clear, you can easily disable traffic-based routing using Settings in either app.

Our traffic-based routing is based on INRIX data. INRIX collects more real-time traffic info from more sources than anyone else in the industry, including crowd-sourced data from commercial fleet and consumer vehicles as well as GPS-enabled mobile devices. MapQuest’s real-time traffic coverage includes over 200,000 miles of roads in North America, which is essentially all major roads in medium-to-large cities. And the coverage is even better during rush hour.

Download our free iPhone or Android app and start avoiding traffic snarls today – then tell us on Twitter or Facebook what you did with the time you saved!

The MapQuest Gas Prices site has been helping drivers find those best deals for years, and we’re happy to report we’ve freshened it up. The new design makes it easier for you to find gas stations sorted either by proximity or cheapest nearby, and select your preferred fuel type (premium, diesel, etc.). We’ve also used a device-responsive design so it will work better on smartphones and tablets, and streamlined updates so that prices are now refreshed up to three times per day.

Also, if you haven’t tried the free MapQuest Gas Prices apps for iPhone or Android, go to the App Store or Google Play and take them for a spin. They may just help you save some cash to pay off those holiday bills!

Drive safe, and enjoy the Holidays.

MapQuest is happy to introduce our MapQuest Gas Prices app for iPhone and Android, now available free on the App Store and Google Play. With this handy app you can easily find the best gas prices near you – whether out on that fall road trip, commuting home, or just running errands around town. The app will automatically find your location and show nearby gas stations, allow filtering by gas type (diesel and E85 users take note), and let you drill down to view available amenities like convenience stores and restaurants. You can even set Favorites to quickly compare gas prices at your preferred stations.

Download the FREE MapQuest Gas Prices app to your iPhone or Android today and start saving on your next tankful!

To see the cameras, just click on “Live Traffic” in the upper right portion of your map. You’ll see toggles for traffic cameras and traffic conditions (our extensive traffic speed and incident info), which you can show together or separately. Hovering on camera icon will show the location, and clicking on it will bring up the images (hint: zoom in closer if there are a lot of cameras in the area).

Our coverage consists of over 11,000 cameras covering 100+ markets in the US and Canada, and we’ll be adding more soon. Update frequencies will vary, but most are updated every couple of minutes or so.

Now you can quickly visualize traffic and weather conditions before your morning commute or heading out on that weekend getaway. It’s all part of our mission to help you get there safely and efficiently.

Check out MapQuest traffic cameras now

Walking Directions are now available just about everywhere driving directions are on MapQuest.com (we’ve had them for a while on our MQ4Mobile and Mobile Web apps).  Walking directions will guide you down the most efficient paths and through parks, often avoiding vehicle traffic. To use the feature, just click Get Directions, select the “walking man” icon above the Start field, and enter your locations.  It’s as simple as that!

Rail Transit Directions are now available in six major metro areas (NYC, Chicago, D.C., San Fran, Boston and Philly) all of which have large subway, elevated and/or commuter rail networks. Rail transit is integrated with walking directions, allowing travelers in these cities to route between towns, addresses, points of interest, or specific transit stations.

To use the transit feature, just click on the train icon (right next to the walking icon), enter your locations, and select the time and date of your trip. Your route map will show walking and transit segments in different colors, with icons indicating the mode of travel, station locations, and transfers. Timing information will be included in your step-by-step directions in the left column. For more details, please see our Help site.

While extremely helpful for travel planning, MapQuest Transit version 1.0 is just a starting point. We’ll be working to add more cities, transit system maps and station details, mobile support, bus routing, and additional enhancements.

Please try out the new features, and stay tuned for more!

As we all know from our own travels in familiar areas however, there is often more than one reasonable way to get between points A and B!

With that in mind, we are pleased to announce Alternate Routes on MapQuest.com.

When you generate driving directions, you will now often see one or two additional options in addition to the “main” route – which is produced using the same time-tested MapQuest technology you’ve come to know and trust. Alternate routes are likely to be just a shade longer in terms of timing or distance – and we won’t show any at all if no good options exist.

You don’t need to do anything to generate alternates – simply look for them under the Suggested Routes heading in the left column.  Each option is given a unique descriptive name based on the main roads it uses. When you move your mouse over the alternate, it will turn light green and you’ll see the alternate route displayed in pink on the map (see image). To select an alternate, just click on the highlighted area and we’ll automatically update your driving directions (for more details, please visit our Help Site).

We hope you like the additional options, and we’d like your feedback.  If you know of alternates that you think are better than what we’ve shown, let us know by filling out our feedback form (please be specific!).  We’ll use your input to make MapQuest’s alternate routes even smarter.

This is all made possible by the new SpeedWavesTM technology developed by our traffic partner INRIX, which factors in the impact of stoplights and stop signs on traffic flow to provide a more realistic and reliable view of traffic conditions along secondary roads. This approach provides higher accuracy than competitors who may interpret vehicles starting and stopping for traffic lights and stop signs on these roads as traffic jams instead of the normal flow of traffic through these intersections.

So if you’re already a fan of MapQuest Traffic, enjoy the expanded coverage! If you haven’t tried it, now is a great time to take us for a test drive as you check out all the other great new features at new.mapquest.com. To view traffic, just click on the “Live Traffic” button along the top of your map and zoom in to see our expanded coverage – or, zoom out to see which cities are covered.

So before you head home from work or take the kids to that cross-town soccer game, go to MapQuest and check out our new and improved Live Traffic!

Showing specific business locations on a map is of course an important capability. But since many MapQuest users come to us mainly for driving directions, we thought showing locations along your route would be helpful too!

Scenario 1:
You live in Colorado Springs and are planning a snowboarding trip to Telluride, but want to spend a day exploring Mesa Verde National Park first. You like staying at Holiday Inns and want to know what options are convenient to the Park.

Scenario 2:
You are a Titans fan planning a trip from Nashville to Indy to the see the season finale vs. Peyton Manning and the Colts. You need to find Walmart along the way to stock up on tailgating supplies.

You can change your view using the “Show on Map” legend which appears in the lower right corner of your map. Alternate display options include showing business locations near a route stop or within the visible map area (enabled only at certain zoom levels).

Our thanks to Walmart and Holiday Inn for their charter sponsorship of this new feature. We will be extending the Locations Along Route capability to other types of searches in the near future, so stay tuned!

For more information about MapQuest Business Locator and other advertising programs, click here.

As part of our ongoing effort to allow MapQuest users more flexibility in tailoring driving directions to their preferences, we are introducing a new draggable route feature. This is a great way to quickly modify your route to avoid traffic or construction, explore a scenic route, or simply use roads you know you prefer. Please give draggable routes a try and let us know what you think as we test and fine-tune it.

The feature is easy to use. The basics:

1. Generate a route
2. Click on the blue route highlight and hold your mouse down
3. Drag the route onto your preferred path. As the mouse is dragged, you will see the “potential” route displayed if the mouse were released at that point
4. When the mouse is released a small red circle (called a “via” point) will be placed at that point.

Your route will then be modified to pass through that via point, and your directions will be updated (note that you may need to add more than one via point to get exactly the route you want). You can interact with the via by dragging it to another new location or hovering over it to see more options.

These include:

• Remove (simply removes the point from consideration in route calculation)
• Search for places nearby
• Add as a Route Stop (this makes it appear as a lettered stop on your map and directions)

Helpful hints:

1. Zoom In. Generally only roads shown at any specific zoom level will be used in route recalculation. Zooming in allows you to more precisely place via points where you want them and avoid unwanted “detours”
2. Patience is a Virtue. It may take a couple seconds to process your request and update your route
3. Watch those “potential” routes. Look carefully at the possible routes shown as you drag the mouse (careful, this gets addictive). Let go of the mouse only after you see your preferred route path

We are pretty excited about this feature, but then (having pioneered online driving directions) we’re geeks for this sort of thing. We hope you like it too – give it a try today.

Please send any feedback to: http://help.mapquest.com/jive/mqfeedback.jspa