Google Adds Bike Routes to Google Maps

On Wednesday Google added bike maps to its online maps. They collected data for about 150 cities with the help of non-profit Rail to Trails a group who creates bike paths from unused railroad tracks.

There are two ways to access the bike maps. The first is found in the Get Directions section. These maps describe the most efficient route to bike somewhere much in the same way that the directions section for cars does. The second way to access the maps is to pull up a map of a location and find bike friendly streets for exploring and recreation. In order to do this, go to a Google map and in the upper right corner where it says “more” use the pull down menu to select bicycling.

The idea for this began with bike rider Peter Smith, from Austin, Texas. He started an online petition to persuade Google to add the bike lanes to their maps. After gathering 50,000 signatures, Google took notice and their techies got to work creating an algorithm that helped its computers find bike appropriate routes between two locations. The computer then selected routes with existing bike lanes and less traffic while avoiding hills and busy intersections. I looked up a few routes in my not so bike friendly city of Los Angeles and the routes often paralleled busy streets and were very direct routes. I’m impressed.

There have been several websites in different cities that list bike routes but this is the first time there are so many cities covered on one site. The goal for this project is to encourage people to drive less and bike more. By facilitating the public in finding efficient and safe routes, it will be hard to find a reason to not get going on the old two-wheeler.

Source here and here