Routing around a set time on one or more of the waypoints

Question

This is using either Bing Maps API or Google Maps API.

Problem: I am trying to create a route for a salesperson that may have 1 or more meetings that day plus visit selections from a pool. Meaning the salesperson has 1 meeting at a client and they want to stop by some leads but around that meeting time.

I doubt either service can handle this problem directly.Is their as way to get a "table of time between destinations" from these services, without running up my requests.

The only way I know how is to submit each variation on the route, store in a table or array, then based on the services "time to get there", calculate the best order. Then resubmit again. My client could easily burn off 20 - 30 requests per try.

Is there any other option? Maybe an free open source one with sh*ty algorithm then submit the final list to one of the above?

Answer 1

You can use the distance matrix service, see the documentation here: https://developers.google.com/maps/documentation/distancematrix/

In this way, you will be able to compute multiple route between multiple points and certainly reduce the number of requests overall.

If your request is just to get an optimization for a sales man, you can also check the option on Routing service and its optimize option, see: https://developers.google.com/maps/documentation/directions/#Waypoints

On Bing, route optimization (waypoint reordering) is not available yet but you can achieve this with the Route Matrix API.