Google Maps for Cyclists (Comments: 1)
Author: Adam
Date: 29 February, 2008
Category: Cycling Thoughts, Take Action!
Many of you are familiar with the usefulness of Google Maps for planning bike trips. It’s designed primarily for use by motorists, but with a few tricks it makes finding your way somewhere by bike very easy.
Start planning your trip by clicking on the “Get directions” tab under the Google Maps search bar. Enter your start and end addresses, and Google offer you its best guess on how you want to get there, which will often take you over highways:
Luckily, there’s a checkbox called “Avoid Highways” that you can click to have Google Maps find the shortest route that doesn’t use highways:
But it gets even better. Many cyclists feel that traveling on back roads can be more pleasant and safe than sticking to high-capacity arterial roads. Google Maps puts you on the major arterial roads when it can, but lucky for us, the interface allows you to click and drag your route and find better ways to get to your destination:
This should take one-way streets and “no left turns” into account, so you hopefully won’t run into any surprises on your route. Click the “Link” button to generate a link to save or share. Click “Print” to print out a handy guide you can put in your pocket. And then get on your bike and try it out! Google Maps was quite useful in helping Caitlin and I figure out our morning route across Rochester.
There’s plenty of room for this web application to improve. Since it isn’t built for cyclists, it has no information on mixed use paths or bike lanes. Sites like byCycle.org and Bikely have built some interesting services on top of Google Maps, but wouldn’t it be cool if there was a “Bike There” feature as part of the Google Maps interface?
In fact, there is an online petition you can go sign right now (thanks, Nicole!) to ask Google to do just that! I don’t know how effective these online petitions are, but at the very least it lets the Google Maps team know that there are thousands of people out there who would love to use this feature.
1 comment to “Google Maps for Cyclists”