Google Biking

[topaz]

Google Maps gets biking directions: http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2010/03/biking-directions-added-to-google-maps.html

Dark green routes are dedicated bike trails and sidepaths; light green are bike lanes, and dashed green lines are "recommended" roads for biking.

I haven't explored it much yet to see what I think of the actual routes it suggests.  It seems to recommend bike paths and lanes strongly over other roads, which is fine, but of course it can't really take things like road surface quality into account.

Comments

[randysmith]

but of course it can't really take things like road surface quality into account.

I see this and I think "why the heck not??". It would require some level of crowd sourcing, but that'd be a useful thing to suggest to the team. If I work there I may try and do that :-}.

Your point about the recommendations is interesting, though; I've had multiple modes in my own biking life of whether I preferred direct path with traffic, or mellow bikepath without. That might be an area for personal preference learning. Hmmm.

(Can you tell I'm considering working at Google? It gives a much more personal investment in these kind of issues :-})

[qwrrty.livejournal.com]

The "multiple modes" problem is exactly what I always thought would make a bike mapping application really useful: if I could ask it to optimize for distance, or for hills, or for quality of ride.... or even scenery.

The route it recommends between East Arlington and my office favors the Minuteman bikeway extension all the way through Davis Square. That's a fine way to go if your goal is to minimize road travel, but I prefer taking Mass Ave. to Beacon St. and cutting a half-mile off the route. That's hard to account for, given the range of individual tastes.

[randysmith]

But Google's all about adapting to individual taste, at least with regard to their ads; no reason it can't do so with regard to their directions too. Just allow them to scan your brain and keep a fully functional computer simulation of you online and everything will be fine :-} (but I am serious about thinking that the adaptation to individual tastes could be done.)

[qwrrty.livejournal.com]

Sure, I believe that the application could offer you different routes based on your personal preferences. It could even learn what your preferences are (e.g. offer a few different alternative routes and invite you to click on a button to let it know which one you liked best).

I think the hard part would be collecting data on issues like road surface quality and lane width. Those aren't quantities with a known canonical source, but can affect the bikeability of a route a lot.

[sconstant.livejournal.com]

bike + geeky = beaky?

[khedron.livejournal.com]

From the blog, it sounds like it may take hills into account, which is neat.

Unfortunately for me, it can't actually create bike routes where there really aren't any. The shortest path to the close Mexican place for me is on a busy and fast road through the middle of a freeway cloverleaf. Google, can you fix that?

More seriously, to the local coffeeshop it recommends taking the bigger surface street instead of the small winding streets. Hills may play a role in that too. For my comfort factor, I take the side streets with the hills every single time.

[enf.livejournal.com]

File a bug! Well, it won't fix the freeway overpass, but really, people do actually look at what you say in the "report unmapped bike routes, streets that aren't suited for cycling, and other problems here" form, so the routes should get better over time.

Getting quality data about roads is a big problem. There is no systematic data source for pavement quality, and even the information about where hills are is full of noise.

[khedron.livejournal.com]

I was planning on sending a word in, but thank you for the encouragement!

Pavement quality is going to be a rough one in general, since it's going to vary over time. Columbus is spending a *lot* on pothole repair right now.

and even the information about where hills are is full of noise.

*sings* The hills are alive, with the sound ... oh, nevermind.

[tyrannio.livejournal.com]

If people with phones that have accelerometers and GPS were willing to share the data, you might be able to estimate bumpiness of ride.

[enf.livejournal.com]

Oh, good point. I was thinking of GPS logs mostly as a source of what routes and turns people chose to follow in practice, but it probably could track bumpiness too.