What a strange time to be looking for directions.
With the recent executive order by U.S. President Donald Trump to rename Lake Ontario to Lake America (in the U.S., anyway), map applications like Google Maps have already made the switch.
Expectedly, this hasn’t gone down well. Canadian companies such as the Liquor Control Board of Ontario (LCBO), Hydro One, Metrolinx, and even the Canadian Government itself have received negative press over maps on their websites that depict Lake America — which is largely blamed on third-party embedded maps that have renamed the lake.
Now, I should note before we get into this that if you are hesitant about changing, Google Maps does localize its mapping services for naming disputes based on the country you’re in, so you won’t see Lake America when using the app. If you want a non-American example of this, there’s the Japanese/Korean East Sea dispute, where both North and South Korea use the East Sea, while Japan uses the Sea of Japan; it is shown on Google Maps as such, with both names shown for international users.
I should also mention that this list doesn’t include Waze, or Apple Maps. While it is a good option if you want to switch to a different navigator, it is wholly owned by Google’s parent company, Alphabet Inc. So if you want to ditch Google’s mapping tech entirely, you’re going to have to go with something else.
MapQuest has come out on social media following the news of the executive order, saying it won’t change the name in its systems.
We’re not changing it. pic.twitter.com/NdeE9v2BNO
Following this, downloads for MapQuest on both iOS and Android soared, with the app sliding into top positions among free apps on both the Canadian and US app stores, which The Washington Post notes is the highest position in the company’s 30-year history.
After noodling around with it for a little bit, I honestly really like it. The routes I punched in were quite direct and are actually routes I use in real life (which includes my highway route to my local GO station, bravo). However, you do have to be mindful of road closures, as I noticed it sometimes didn’t display them on maps, and one faster route went directly through a road near me that is currently closed for construction.
Although I do like the bicycle feature, I also wish public transit options were available, especially if you’re trying to navigate to a city’s downtown and don’t want to deal with the headache of driving.
Another alternative if you’re on the hunt is Organic Maps, available for both iOS and Android.
After messing around with it for a little bit, it’s honestly a nice middle ground between both Google Maps and Apple Maps.
I also really like the UI. It comes with three direction options: route to, route from, and save, which I found makes it much quicker to set your directions than any other option I tested.
I like that there is a public transit option (cars are expensive), but it’s annoying that it doesn’t default to the GO train for certain routes. For example, I set directions to the CN Tower, and instead of telling me to take the Lakeshore East, it made me take a ton of buses and subways to get there, in what would’ve been a three-and-a-half-hour excursion.
I also found that it made me download some maps before actually using it, so that’s something to look into before you use this app when travelling.
