Most online mapping applications have a built-in distance calculator to help you quickly measure the road distance between any two cities or any two points within a city. Google Maps even has a special distance measurement tool (disabled by default) that you may use calculate the shortest route (as the crow flies) between any two points on Earth.
Calculate Distances with Bing Maps
There’s a new distance calculator included in Bing Maps as well but it’s a little different and probably a bit more useful than what you have in Google Maps. To get started, go to bing.com/maps and select the “Distance Calculator” app.
You can either drag the flag to the starting address, or for more accurate results, search the exact location before adding it the map. Now drag another flag to the destination address and Bing will immediately calculate the road distance as well as the flight distance between the two points.
The airplane icon represents the shortest air distance between the locations while the bus & car icon give an approximate idea of the road distance. You can continue adding any number of points to your route and the total driving distance will automatically get updated.
To learn more, watch this quick video demo of the distance calculator app of Bing. The tool should come handy if you are curious to know how many frequent flier air miles will you earn in your next trip that spans multiple cities.
Thank you Chris Pendleton for the tip.
