How to reverse a route and drive it the other way

Open the Route menu in Route by Zaweba and choose Reverse the stops. The order of your stops is flipped, so the last becomes the first, and the route is worked out again for the new direction. It takes one click and works on a simple A to B trip or a whole multi-drop round.

Reversing sounds trivial, since the stops are the same, but the route that comes back is often not just the old one backwards. That is the interesting part.

Why the reverse route can differ

Roads are not always the same in both directions. One-way streets, banned turns and slip roads that only join one carriageway all change the best path. Route honours turn restrictions, so a reversed leg can take a different road from the outward one. Drive times can differ too, which is why the reversed round may have a slightly different total.

Time windows make an even bigger difference. If a stop must be visited between nine and ten, putting it at the other end of the day may leave you hours late or with a long wait. Route shows arrival times, waits and late arrivals for each stop, so after reversing, look down the list for anything newly marked.

When reversing is the right tool

The commonest use is the return trip. Plan the outward journey, save it, reverse the stops and save again under a new name, and you have both.

It also helps with rounds. Some drivers like to start at the far end and work back towards home, so the long drive happens while they are fresh. Others reverse to see whether the other direction suits the morning traffic they know about, or a customer who can only be seen early.

Reverse the stops or optimise again?

Reverse the stops keeps your sequence and only turns it round. Optimise order, on the Route menu or Ctrl+Shift+O, searches for the best sequence from scratch, using the travel time or distance between every pair of stops, and supports a fixed start, a fixed end or a return to the start. The result is never worse than the order you gave it.

If your round is already optimised and you only want to drive it backwards, reverse it. If your start or end has changed, for example because you are setting off from a different depot, optimising again with the new fixed start is usually better, since the best order from one end is not always the best from the other.

Reversing a round in practice

Open or plan the route. Make sure your set-off time is right, because arrival times for every stop are worked out from it. Choose Route > Reverse the stops. Look at the new order, the arrival times and any late or waiting stops. Use Route > Zoom to the route to see the whole trip, and read through the directions for each leg.

If you had added via points by dragging the line, check them. A via point chosen to take a particular road on the way out may not suit the way back. Route > Clear the via points removes them all, and you can drag the line again for any leg that needs it.

Keeping both directions

Save each direction as its own .ozroute file, which keeps the stops, time windows, options, set-off time and via points. File > Save as is the quick way to make the second copy. Next week, open whichever you need from Recent files.

You can also export each direction separately, as a PDF route sheet, a GPX file for a satnav, or Google Maps links for the phone, so a driver who does the round both ways has the right sheet for each.

Reversing is one click in Route by Zaweba, and it is a good habit to look over the times afterwards, because the same stops in the other order can make for a very different day.