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Rising gas prices have added insult to injury, coinciding with the flattening of the real estate market in Virginia and around the country. Realtors all over the world spend much of their working days driving from property to property to property, burning fuel and, as prices go up, money. Our association has recently implemented a new program that we feel achieves that elusive triple bottom line: Benefit to members, benefit to the environment, and benefit to the association.

It's called IdealRoute. It solves the age-old traveling salesman problem: What is the most efficient driving route between three or more locations and then get you back to where you started? Here's how it works...

Just add addresses one at a time to the text box below the map and when you've added them all, click "Calculate Fastest Roundtrip." Using a Google Maps mashup, IdealRoute determines the optimal route between all locations and even gives you turn-by-turn directions for all destinations that you can print out (double-sided, of course) and take with you. And it works for routes anywhere in the USA.

By now you've figured out that IdealRoute could be useful for your association work or personal life as well:
1. Determine the ideal route between hotels in your convention's host city.
2. Discover the best order in which to run your weekend errands.
3. Plan your sightseeing itinerary to cut down on travel time.

In the press, The Boston Globe, Inman News, and others have covered IdealRoute. We invite you to give it a test drive, too!