Exclude roads or areas from routes
Keep Upper from routing through specific zones by drawing a restricted area on your Service Area map — for closures, no-go neighborhoods, and out-of-service boundaries.
Some neighborhoods are off-limits — gated communities you can't enter, construction closures, areas outside your delivery commitment, or stretches with safety concerns. Upper lets you draw a restricted area on your Service Area map so the optimizer routes around that zone instead of through it. You encode the constraint once, and future routes respect it.
This guide uses Upper's default driver and delivery labels. Your workspace may show Technician and Service instead (for example "Assign Technicians") — the wording is configurable, but the steps are the same.
How restricted areas behave
- The optimizer plans routes to go around a restricted area rather than through it.
- A stop whose address falls inside a restricted area is flagged during route building (marked as inside a restricted zone) — it is still kept on the route, not automatically removed. You decide whether to keep it, move it, or delete it.
- Restricted areas live in your Service Area settings alongside your coverage zones.
Keep boundaries simple. A clean shape with a few corner points routes more predictably than a many-sided polygon traced tightly around a neighborhood.
Set up a restricted area
You manage restricted areas from your Service Area settings under Coverage.
Open Service Area settings
Go to Settings, then Coverage, and open Service Area.
Add a restricted area on the map
Add a new area and mark it as restricted, then draw its boundary on the map by placing points around the zone you want to block.
Name and save the area
Give the area a name you'll recognize later — for example "Downtown construction" or "Hilltop gated community" — and save it.
Common uses
| Use case | Example |
|---|---|
| Active road closure | Block a construction zone for the duration of the work |
| No-access areas | A permanent boundary around a gated community you can't enter |
| Service boundary | Areas outside your delivery commitment, so the optimizer doesn't plan stops there |
| Safety concern | A neighborhood you've decided not to send drivers into |
To avoid highways or highways and tolls across all of your routes (rather than a specific geographic zone), use the Avoid setting in your User Settings driving preferences instead of a restricted area.
Troubleshooting
Related
Assign specific stops to specific drivers
Lock a stop to one or more chosen drivers in Upper with Pre-Assigned Drivers. The optimizer honors your choice and distributes the rest of the stops automatically.
How long optimization takes
Most route optimizations in Upper finish quickly. Run time depends on how many stops and drivers you have and how many constraints the optimizer must respect.