Abstract: A hierarchical route planning algorithm is proposed in the paper to reduce the searching space of the algorithm, and makes the planning result more reasonable. Based on the different hierarchic rank of the roads in a road net, the algorithm processes the net by its hierarchical scenario, and constructs the hierarchical searching strategy, to promote the searching efficiency. As a practical application of the algorithm in real-time vehicle navigation systems, one example is given, and the experimental results show that the time for calculating the shortest path between two arbitrary points within the road network can be reached to within 1 second by the new algorithm.