Multi-stop route distance

Worked example: five western capitals

Visiting the capitols of California, Nevada, Utah, Idaho, and Oregon in that order has these straight-line legs:

• Sacramento, CA to Carson City, NV: 101 miles
• Carson City, NV to Salt Lake City, UT: 432 miles
• Salt Lake City, UT to Boise, ID: 296 miles
• Boise, ID to Salem, OR: 349 miles

The total is 1,178 miles. A road trip through the same stops is longer, because highways bend around mountain ranges.

How to use it

1. Click the map or search to add stops in order. Each stop gets a number on the map, and a line joins them.
2. Watch the line under the buttons: it gives the straight-line total in kilometers and miles and the number of stops.
3. Press Nearest-neighbor order to reorder the stops from the first one. It needs at least three stops.
4. Press Driving total for road kilometers and driving time through all stops in the current order.
5. Clear removes every stop.

How the total is built

Each leg is a great-circle distance between consecutive stops, measured with the haversine formula. The running total updates after every click. The order of stops is the order you added them, unless you press the reorder button.

Stops are numbered on the map. Clear starts over. There is a limit of 25 stops, which keeps the driving request within what the public routers accept.

Nearest-neighbor ordering

The reorder button keeps your first stop and then repeatedly picks the closest stop not yet visited. It is quick and often good, but it is not guaranteed to find the shortest route. With a handful of stops you can usually beat it by hand, for example by visiting an outlying stop on the way out instead of at the end.

It does not return to the start. Add the first stop again at the end if you need a loop.

Driving totals

The driving button sends the stops, in their current order, to Valhalla and falls back to OSRM. The answer shows kilometers, time, and which router answered. Both are free public services with no uptime guarantee. When neither answers, the page says so and keeps the straight-line total.

Planning a better order

For a handful of stops, try a few orders by hand and watch the total. A good order usually sweeps around the stops in one direction without doubling back. Put the farthest stop in the middle of the trip rather than at the end, and start and finish at the stops nearest home.