Google Maps for Bike Commuters?

Posted by PeterD Sat, 01 Mar 2008 18:21:00 GMT

I have been using Google Maps for driving directions for a while, and find it to be quite useful. But it really doesn’t help when you want to bike commute.

I have also tried to fake it to work for biking, which they made easier by having a new selection allowing you to avoid highways. But this really doesn’t work well for biking, as it still uses assumptions appropriate for cars (maybe it was made for people riding Vespas or other vehicles not allowed on freeways?), but not bicycles. For example, if I was riding north from the shop, I would take Old County Road and go straight through the parking lot of the racetrack to Delaware, but cars are not allowed to do this (so it doesn’t show up on Google Maps).

They now have a public transport option, which still has some bugs (at least in SF – doesn’t have any Muni, just BART and CalTrain). But I think that this is a step in the right direction.

There are some non-Google sites that do bike routes for certain locations, like http://amarpai.com/bikemap/bikemap.html for San Francisco.

Now there is an online petition requesting that Google add a selection to find routes for bikers. If this is something you’d like to see, please click on http://www.petitiononline.com/bikether/petition.html