January 15, 2004 - Fastest Route In Town

One of the members of the dedicated staff of edhat.com remembers growing up in an unusual family where sex, religion and politics were safe topics for dinner table conversation, but discussing the best directions from the grocery store to the post office was not.  In fact, optimal routing would often cause heated arguments worthy of the Jerry Springer Show. It was definitely worth three hours of argument to save a minute of driving!

Yesterday the dedicated staff of edhat.com, haunted by the memories of dinnertime chat gone bad, decided to do more than yell and scream about which route was the best. We decided to drive it, time it, and let the best route win. And what fun it was! Five dedicated staffers, all in green cars, met at the Santa Barbara Mission on a sunny afternoon.  And, when the checkered flag was waved, we all went our different ways.   We would all eventually end up at the Starbucks in Montecito, but who would get there first?

Here are the results:

1st Place – Dedicated #1
Up to APS to Salinas to Old Coast Hwy- 4.3 mi (8:59)

2nd Place – Dedicated #4
Laguna to Mission to Garden and onto 101 - 4.3 mi (9:34)

3rd Place  – Dedicated #2
Laguna to Anapamu to Milpas and onto 101 – 4.5 mi (9:54)

4th Place  – Dedicated #3
Laguna to Mission and onto 101 – 5.7 mi (10:10)

5th Place  – Dedicated #5
Laguna to Anapamu to Milpas to Mason to Old Coast Hwy – 4.6 mi (11:25)

Frantic drivers should take note of the minimal variations in times. All that weaving and speeding about town might only save 2 minutes of car time.

After some coffee, bragging, and stories of roundabouts and California stops, the dedicated staffers of edhat.com got back into their green cars to do the driving in reverse. Dedicated #1 won again, but there was a slight change in order.  Dedicated #3, who did not need to cross back and forth under the freeway for the return route, came in second.

Here are the results of the return trip:

1st Place – Dedicated #1
Old Coast Hwy to Salinas to APS  (8:08)

2nd Place – Dedicated #3
101 to Mission (9:09)

3rd Place – Dedicated #4
101 to Garden (10:01)

4th Place – Dedicated #2
101 to Milpas (10:15)

5th Place – Dedicated #5
Old Coast Hwy to Salinas to Mason to Milpas (11:15)

So, APS was the big winner.  Mapquest and Yahoo!, who picked Route #3 as shown above, were the big losers. Our subscribers turned out to be astute experts in local traffic.  The top overall choices for slowest and fastest routes in both directions were in fact the correct responses. Interestingly enough only one person actually chose them all on one ballot.  BallFour wins the Peet’s Coffee Card.  He/She can use it at Peet’s where they don’t take Starbucks.

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