I was pinged late yesterday by the Los Angeles County Metropolitan Transportation Authority about this whole “Carmaggedon” nightmare going on in LA this weekend. Being a SoCal native, I empathized with just how horrible this is going to be. Seriously…horrible. Meanwhile, in Seattle, I’m smiling since I don’t have to deal with it; but, that’s neither here nor there. I digress. Empathy reigned and I reached out to my Bing Maps Dev team to see what it would take to create a road closure and detour to guide my long, Lost Angels through the weekend. And, just like that I’m happy to say that Bing Maps is now able to provide routing guidance around the Carmaggedon II. Yay!  In fact, you can make you own URL to watch traffic and plan a route in whichever city you want with a custom Bing Maps URL!

Just pop one of these strings in the Browser URL to get one of my two favorite cities; Los Angeles & Seattle

• https://bing.com/maps/default.aspx?rtp=adr.Los%20Angeles,CA&trfc=1
• https://bing.com/maps/default.aspx?rtp=adr.Seattle,WA&trfc=1

Notice the route on the left routes you on 405, whereas the route on the right routes you down Sepulveda.  Bing Maps temporary "route around" solution will last through the weekend while the freeway is closed.