Google Maps ‘Bike There’

Davis, California (wiki) was in the spotlight this weekend for the grand opening of the U.S. Bicycling Hall of Fame. It used to be located in Somerville, NJ. I’d read something about the upcoming festivities on Friday evening, and decided to take the train from SF to Davis on Saturday.

The train ride was great-ish — lots of nice scenery along the way. Apparently, you used to be able to take a boat from SF all the way to Sacramento — all of this is visible from the train:

Still, he said, he looks forward to certain landmarks: the Rio Vista bridge rising to accommodate the Bay Breeze passing beneath; the ghostly “mothball fleet” of retired ships moored near Benicia; the old C&H Sugar refinery at Crockett; and the East Brother Light Station, now operating as a bed-and-breakfast on an island in the straits separating San Francisco and San Pablo bays.

The train seemed to run about hourly — I used Google Maps to plan my route. I rode my bike to BART (our metro/subway), headed over to Oakland, rode about a mile to the Jack London Square Amtrak stop, hopped on board (there were plenty of bike racks on the train), then about 80 minutes later hopped off in Davis.

I had forgotten until I’d stepped off the train that Davis was a real bike-friendly town — Platinum. There were bikes parked everywhere — it seemed like a smaller version of Amsterdam. Crazy.

Met another biker on the train, Malcolm, who volunteers at the bike shops in both Davis and SF, so we rode over to the Hall of Fame together. It was a quick two-minute ride on what seemed like very calm downtown streets. Malcolm warned me to actually stop at stop signs — the cops in town were sticklers for that sort of thing.

We reached the Hall of Fame at about 4:45 pm — after it’d closed for the day, and just as the evening’s ‘private’ festivities were about to begin. Someone (not mentioning names) heard I was from out of town and managed to get me an ‘Inductee’ badge — and I managed to sneak in after that. Malcolm said he spent a lot of time in the area so he’d get to see the Hall soon enough at a later time.

The place is very cool. I can’t say I’m big into roadie/racing-type biking, but there was lots to see, even if racing is not your thing. Here’s some pre-event press from a Sacramento paper. The SacBee has some day of coverage with details on days and times open, admission fees, etc. The UC Davis (wiki) newspaper, The California Aggie, provided some great coverage, including details of Sunday’s Breakaway from Cancer bike ride from Davis to Santa Rosa:

Yesterday’s Breakaway from Cancer event gave hundreds of cyclists the chance to ride the same 114-mile route that the professionals will race during Stage 2 of the 2010 Amgen Tour of California.

Cancer survivors and four-time Amgen competitor George Hincapie led the pack of amateur cyclists yesterday morning from Davis’ Central Park to Santa Rosa.

Cycling fans from all skill levels could choose to complete 50- or 22-mile segments. The Breakaway Ride, presented by Specialized, was founded in 2005 by Amgen and fundraises for nonprofit partners and those affected by cancer.

The Tour of California is almost here — May 16. Davis gets the start of Stage 2, on the 17th.

George Hincapie (R). Source: The Aggie

A few people spoke at Saturday’s evening event — it was mostly thanking sponsors, but I think everyone was a bit excited to hear what George Hincapie (wiki) had to say. On locating the Hall in Davis, he said, approvingly:

All you see is bicycles and bike lanes.

And he’s right — that’s your first, and probably overwhelming, thought when you first arrive in Davis (assuming you’re not from or used to visiting bicycle meccas). As he was speaking, the crowd could look behind him onto the street and see bicyclists streaming by at a leisurely pace — mostly younger student-types, beach-style cruisers with baskets, wearing flip flops, etc.

Going there I was able to settle one question I’d been curious about — would the Hall talk any about…’regular cycling’ — i.e. commuter cycling, etc. That answer would appear to be, ‘no’ — aside from choosing such a bicycle-friendly city (relatively speaking) to locate in. I wasn’t greatly disappointed because I didn’t expect it, but it made me want to establish a Commuter Cycling Hall of Fame or something like that. Why not? There’s a Mountain Bike Hall of Fame. Our place would basically celebrate the heroes (Streetsblog, Sadik-Khan, etc.) and villains (GM, Moses, etc.) of the bicycling world. In fifty years, people probably won’t believe what we had to put up with.

Speaking of Mountain Biking, there was some of that on display. I even managed to meet Ned “Deadly Nedly” Overend. I saw this hard-core dude on the wall, on some wicked bike, ripping down some hill, and I thought, “Wow — for this mountain bike stuff alone, and this guy crushing everyone for, like, decades — this place is worth a visit.” Then I met him outside when I was making another beer run. Thanks to Sudwerk Restaurant and Brewery for keeping my glass full.

I got a kick out of seeing Gracie Sorbello and her awesome unicycles grace the walls of the Hall. I met Gracie during a 100+ mile Waves to Wine MS event a couple/few years ago. She was riding it on her unicycle. Crazy, and awesome. Gracie’s photo album is here.

The Six-Day Race exhibit — about the Europe-born event which packed Madison Square Garden back in the day — was cool. I guess all sorts of endurance racing was possible a long time ago – before ‘occupational health’ was too much of a concern.

I was pretty anxious to leave the Hall event because it was so nice out, and I just wanted to ride around Davis a bit before it got dark. I did finally jet and cruised around a few blocks in downtown. I have to say — there were too many cars, and as soon as you ventured just outside the down-downtown core — boom — cars and aggressive drivers and all that — definitely not what I was expecting, but I did hear that Davis’ bike mode share had been dropping for some time. It made me wonder if a town could lose its bicycle-friendly status, or get dropped from Platinum to Gold? Even in Davis, providing even minimal infrastructure for cyclists is not a guarantee.

I think a new Platinum+ rating might be in order — it gets conferred upon your city only when you hit 40% mode share of all trips. Why not? Nothing left for cities to grumble about when the League either does or does not honor your city with a particular award level — either you have the mode share or you don’t.

On another topic, Google Maps added kinetic scrolling. Click through to find out exactly what that means — if you use maps a lot, you’ll probably find it useful.

I’ve been using Google Maps bike directions a lot. I can’t wait for the mobile version to drop.

Final note — I added a couple of ‘Thank you’s to the original “We’re live!” post — The Rails to Trails Conservancy (RTC), the SFBC, and the MCBC. We talked about the RTC a few months ago, and said they were, “an awesome bike and walk path-creating and and right-of-way-preserving organization.”

[Update:] OK, this is really weird, but I actually started looking into this idea of starting a sort of ‘national bicycle museum’ (for ‘lifestyle’ cycling) — probably either in my current hometown of San Francisco, possibly Portland, and maybe even somewhere else. Well, it turns out that the US Bicycling Hall of Fame (USBHOF) is actually co-located with the California Bicycle Museum (CBM) — I just didn’t realize it! Most if not all of the bottom floor of the USBHOF building is actually the CBM — I think.

There is also a Bicycle Museum of America in Bremen, Ohio — which is located outside of Lancaster, Ohio — which is located outside of Columbus, Ohio.

I have to say, I really like this idea of creating a world-class bicycle museum. Imagine being able to go into  a big, nice building in downtown somewhere and being able to check all the incredible bikes and lifestyles that biking offers. See Portland’s rain-ready bikes, San Francisco’s bike messenger bikes, Oakland’s scraper bikes, Austin’s custom bikes, Walmart’s cheap bikes, LA’s low-rider bikes, Huntington Beach’s beach cruiser bikes, New York’s fixed-gear bikes, Amsterdam’s cargo bikes, Ho Chi Minh’s pedicab bikes, London’s mail bikes, Paris’ beautiful delivery bikes, Copenhagen’s Christiania bikes, etc. etc. etc.!

If you’re into making your own Google Maps (i.e. if you’re a nerd/programmer), this post may be of interest to you.

A sample application might be if you wanted to find the nearest bike shop, or bar, or both, on your bike ride home — now it’s possible to do that with the Google Maps v3 API.

On March 10, the same day that Google announced bike directions for the US, they also released the API update.

Then, just a couple of days ago, on March 23, Google released an API  update that allows developers to get access to elevation data for any point on the globe (not just the US, and includes ocean depths, shown as negative elevations). Now, bike directions already take into account elevations, but it’s always good to have access to the raw data — there’s no telling what kind of creative ways you can use Google Maps to help us travel and live smarter and better.

In Google’s words:

Overall, we’re hoping the Elevation service will help you build higher-quality applications catered towards hiking, biking, mobile positioning, and low resolution surveying.

Here’s a screenshot of their blog post which shows profile data for Lombard Street in San Francisco:

Happy hacking!

p.s. I’m late on this, but StreetFilms just held a celebration/fundraiser here in SF tonight — I missed it as I’m a bit germy at the moment, but I do have my own personal earmark set aside for them. It’s not much, but it’s something, and every bit will help. If a picture is worth a thousand words, then a StreetFilm might be worth a million words. Like bike directions on Google Maps, I think that StreetFilms will continue to be felt in increasingly wider circles, in more manifold ways. They’re just that good.

StreetFilms has a number of ways you can help support the cause — straight donations, some with t-shirt and DVD gifts, sponsorship packages, you name it.

And if you’ve tried to watch some StreetFilms on your iPhone only to be thwarted by the lack of Flash, you might be able to find your film over on the StreetFilms Youtube Channel. Mobile advocacy — gotta love it!

If you cruise around the bike blogosphere, you’ll eventually run across this ad for the new bike directions feature of Google Maps:

I think the ad is kind of nifty, and I still can hardly believe it’s real.

One place I know I’ve seen the ad is over on this bikeportland.org post.

Anyways, saved for posterity’s sake.

A post-announcement news round-up is on the way, but on the first day of Spring 2010 (now, the day after), I’m a bit too excited about one article in particular, that I just need to share it now — from The Atlantic (hyperlinks and bold mine):

Other websites already provide biking directions, including ridethecity.com and mapmyride.com. However, Google being Google, the introduction of Google biking will attract a larger audience, or at least anyone who Googles the word “bike.” Ideally, Google’s heft could also influence city planners to create more bike lanes and more-reluctant bikers to put on a helmet and get peddling. And coupled with the greatest biking incentive in the world — warmer springtime weather — Google biking looks like it picked the right time to get into gear.

This sentiment, that the simple introduction of bicycle directions on Google Maps, could actually influence city planners to…change their plans, is pretty amazing — and I think it’s spot on, and probably it is not nearly hopeful enough.

The influence of Google’s bike directions (and maps) will, I believe, be felt in increasingly wider circles (people, business, policy, culture), and in more manifold ways.

Said another way, I don’t believe we can really know what other positive influences these bike directions will have until they arise naturally over the next few months and years — the intermediate advances will have to be realized, first.

I think it’s not a stretch to suggest that Google’s introduction of biking directions has already ‘changed the game’. Being very explicit — I think Google’s introduction of biking directions helped sway Ray LaHood to issue his ‘sea change’ comments.

Think about it — one of the most influential companies in the world says, “You know what, y’all? We think bikes kinda rock, so we’re gonna go ahead and do this bike directions thing that will put biking, finally, on an equal footing with driving, transit, and walking.”

What happens a few days later? The Secretary of Transportation for the United States of America says, essentially, the same thing.

Maybe I might not be so crazy to think that Google Maps could have had that much of an influence already. Here’s the League of American Bicyclists’ Andy Clarke:

It is a game-changer, especially for those short trips that are the most polluting… This new tool will open people’s eyes to the possibility and practicality of hopping on a bike and riding.

Even the car people seem to suggest a casual, if not causal, connection between bike directions and the ‘sea change’ comments from LaHood:

First Google Bike Maps, now this.

The next step, of course, is for us advocate-types to tilt the pendulum such that non-motorized transit is actually favored over motorized transit. We’ll get there.

Spring is here. Seemingly every car in existence is being recalled. And I need to go out and ride while I jam to an old, but new-to-me band, MGMT.

Happy riding! 

There are myriad events affecting Google’s stock price from day to day, but on the day bike directions were announced, Google shares jumped about two percent:

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wbM7G3KKZjQ

I’m not a stock guy, so I have no idea if it was really bike directions news that helped push Google’s stock higher — or had any effect at all, one way or the other — but you can check out yourself the opening and closing prices (I calculate +2.3%), and news events on and around March 10, the announcement date.

Our FAQ #15 suggested this would be the case (green text mine):

15. What’s in this effort for Google and the Google Maps (and/or Transit) team and Google stockholders?

Besides the indirect benefits that Google would reap from this feature implementation (like, say, the continuing and/or increased adoration of millions of people around the world), there are probably direct benefits. As mentioned in the petition, this feature would “Help Google realize its core mission of ‘organizing the world’s information and making it universally accessible and useful.’” But I also believe this feature is a money-maker – an effort aimed at the quickly-growing number of people who choose to commute by bike. Google will be positioning itself to capture more local advertising revenue, be able to capture a larger share of the burgeoning bicycle industry, and its expertise in the mapping/GIS arena (one of growing importance) will be further strengthened. Since Google Maps revolutionized online mapping, lots of folks are starting to realize the importance of this revenue stream. Google stockholders will be pleased with the introduction of bicycle directions to Google Maps as this feature would almost certainly have a positive impact on share price.

Let’s see if Microsoft, Yahoo, Mapquest and others wants to compete, or if they’re just going to cede online mapping to Google.

I did the San Jose Bike Party last night. Good times. One great scene was seeing all these different groups of bikers converging on the meeting point from every different direction — big chopper bikes, etc. It looked like a revolution was about to happen. Maybe it is.

Happy First Day of Spring! Get on your bikes and ride!

Big day!

Today we’ve added biking directions and extensive bike trail data to Google Maps for the U.S. My team has been keeping close tabs on all the public support for biking directions that’s been steadily coming in, but we knew that when we added the feature, we wanted to do it right: we wanted to include as much bike trail data as possible, provide efficient routes, allow riders to customize their trip, make use of bike lanes, calculate rider-friendly routes that avoid big hills and customize the look of the map for cycling to encourage folks to hop on their bikes. So that’s exactly what we’ve done.

Here’s a quick little screenshot (or, go try them out now):

And here’s a quick video of how to use the bike directions:

Thanks to the Google Maps team that put together, what at first glance, appears to me to be an exceptional tool. The quick and accurate routing, the multiple route options, the drag-and-drop routing ability, and the bike route layer are all brilliant.

Thanks to all of you 51,330 (and growing) petition-signers who took the time to lend your support to the cause. I believe we helped make a difference.

Thanks to long-time editor of this site, Brandon Warga, for preventing many of my mistakes from going out the door — too bad we didn’t have him before we wrote up the petition!

Thanks to Pierre for providing the French translation of the petition.

Thank to Bibi for providing the Italian translation of the petition.

Thanks to RideTheCity.com for proving that bike directions could be done, and done very well. I can’t tell you how many comments and emails I received saying: a) why are you doing this? b) why aren’t you doing this yourself? c) this can’t be done, d) this should not be done, e) etc. It was so common we decided to add it to the FAQ — with a bit of a defiant tone. RideTheCity were not necessarily the first web application in the world to provide bike directions, but when I first saw RideTheCity, I was very impressed — and it made myself and others hopeful that Google would eventually follow suit.

Thanks to the many people over the past couple of years who said, “Keep it up!” — your support was often the only thing keeping us hopeful and energized. In comments, in person, through email — y’all rock!

Thanks to the myriad people, places, and policies who had some role in pushing for this feature — too many to list, of course, but off the top of my head:

• BikePortland.org — for making it obvious how a website could help build community and inspire us to action
• City of Palo Alto — for allowing me to be introduced to ‘everyday cycling’ by way of bike lanes and physically-separated bike paths
• Austin — for being an insanely cool place, with insanely cool people, and a crazy-fun place to get around on bike (and an awful elevated highway that cut downtown in half and convinced me that bikes were the best way forward )
• Austin Bike People — for being insanely cool people who were enthusiastic supporters of the petition and really helped kickstart its take-off
• Wheatsville Coop and Black Star Coop — who inspired by being living examples of ‘working together to achieve common goals’
• Other Mapping Efforts — for pushing us all to continue to think bigger in terms of what could be possible for an online mapping tool
• John Pucher — for an incredible presentation at Simon Fraser University that first alerted us to the existence of sophisticated bicycle mapping tools like BBBike, for inspiring us with examples and data, for imploring us to use all the tools at our disposal to turn public opinion in our favor, and for speaking out in favor of social justice and, in particular, women’s rights and the importance of appropriate bicycle infrastructure.
• Rails to Trails Conservancy — an official provider of bike trail data to Google.
• San Francisco Bicycle Coalition — one of the first ‘big outfits’ to talk about the petition — in this case, in their newsletter.
• Marin County Bicycle Coalition — put us in their newsletter early on.

My deep apologies if I missed anyone!

This site will stick around and we may even continue to post occasionally.

Looking forward to tons more people being exposed to biking as a practical and fun way to get around town!

…added Rails to Trails Conservancy, San Francisco Bicycle Coalition, and Marin County Bicycle Coalition.

Google is facing space problems at its worldwide headquarters, nicknamed The Googleplex, in Mountain View, California (about half-way between San Francisco and San Jose). Check out the story and a video report here:

Internet search giant Google has asked the city of Mountain View to allow homes and storefronts to be built near its headquarters.

At a City Council and Planning Commission meeting Tuesday night, officials considered a letter from Google. The letter said the company wants plans for a stretch of Shoreline Blvd near its headquarters to include more housing.

Every day, fleets of buses coming from all over the Bay Area take Google’s employees to their offices. Google said in its letter that building more homes nearby would be more sustainable.

In the video, notice all the cars. Notice how wide the roads are, with the unbuffered, unprotected, non-grade-separated, split-by-gutters bike lanes. Notice how loud the cars are — even blocking out much of the audio in the video clip. As beautiful as the Mountain View area is, including and especially the Googleplex area, it seems shocking that anyone would allow cars to so completely overwhelm a place of such natural beauty. It’s really a crime.

Google has talked a lot about renewable energy and all sorts of very high-tech ways for us to live better and greener, and they’ve done quite a bit — relatively speaking, with bikes — but they’ve not done enough. Google can save and profit from becoming more bike-friendly. People, including potential genius future employees and their families, love bike-friendly.

At some point, we need to convince someone high up at the company that bikes are a serious, if old-fashioned, technology. Bike technology can solve many of Google’s growing pains.

Bikes can also make a place a great place to be — a great place to work, play, live. I just returned to San Francisco after a quick weekend in Fullerton/Los Angeles — a very car-dominated place, relatively speaking (and I’m still completely enamored with LA culture and LA people). On my Monday morning bicycle ride into work in SF, I just thought, “Wow — so civilized.” Or, more accurately, “Wow — so much less uncivilized.”

All the talk of ‘sustainability’ really misses that important aspect of bike culture vs. car culture — quality of life. In the video, a person walking their dog near the Googleplex says, “…I wouldn’t want to live here.” Ouch.

Providing enough space for cars and anything else is becoming increasingly difficult. You can have cars, or you can have housing, but you can’t have both. It’s the old Jane Jacobs advice — you are going to have attrition of the Googleplex by cars, or attrition of cars by the Googleplex — one side is going to be dominant, and it’s a policy decision that we make consciously every time we add roads and lanes without accommodating pedestrians and cyclists. Thus far, cars have won out, but we’re not doomed to repeating the mistakes that got us here. Get rid of that first ginormous car parking lot and build the first mixed use building. Provide some real bicycle infrastructure. Watch community opposition disappear. If you promise to make Mountain View better, you’ll find that people actually want to help you implement your plans — but if you promise to deliver them more cars/traffic/air and noise pollution/danger/brutishness, they’ll fight you all the way to City Hall.

A little over a year ago, our now-retired sister blog published a post titled, ‘To Save Money, Google Can Do More with Bikes, Land Use‘. We left a few quick recommendations:

1. Hire a bicycle program coordinator for the Googleplex campus. Their job is to motivate your employees, to help make and keep them happy and healthy, to save you money, and make Google the bike-friendliest company on earth. Any program should be open, as much as is possible, to contractors (note added: that is, ‘contract workers’).
2. Call up the SFBC and the SVBC and tell them that ‘Google wants in’ – tell them ‘we want to lend our institutional support’ to making the Bay Area the #1 most bikable region on earth.
3. Start thinking more creatively about land use, and how you can work with the Mountain View City Council and other local and regional governments to make the Googleplex more like a traditional transit-oriented development – maybe it can become a bicycle-oriented development. Mixed-use. Housing. Shopping. Retail. Whatever. No more parking lots.

And don’t call the position ‘bicycle coordinator’ — give the person some real power to make Google some money — ‘Bicycle Program Manager’, etc.

The (highway) 101 is a human-maiming and killing scar that runs between SF and San Jose — and it cuts off the Googleplex from the rest of civilization, including the commuter train, Caltrain, busy commercial/retail corridors (e.g. El Camino Real) and shopping centers, etc. The 101 is certainly a crime against humanity and one that should be scaled down from car-only use to provide a bicycle highway and transit corridor, and ideally, phase out car use on it altogether. There is always talk of building special walk/bike bridges over the 101 at various points — little gerbil runs — to allow people to walk and bike to that place where only cars go — but I’d prefer we demand to be treated like humans, and get full access to existing roadways — just reappropriate some space for pedestrians and bikers. I recently accepted a job offer in SF because the other option would be to Caltrain down from SF to Redwood City (awesome-ish), but then make a 3-mile ride from the Caltrain station through this brutish, car-centric landscape, including a ride across that loveliest of all highways, the 101 — not my cup of tea. Google can help make the Googeplex accessible to people on foot and bike — it’s not rocket science, we have the technology to make Google better, faster, stronger. It’s called the bicycle, and sufficient bicycle and pedestrian infrastructure — and it’s already working wonders around the US and around the world.

[via sf curbed]

…TechCrunch has the letters from/to Google/City of Mountain View. Many folks have been pointing out for years that existing zoning laws are not ideal — that is, many/most of the places we most enjoy because they allow us to walk instead of drive, would be illegal to build today because of auto-centric zoning laws. The Googleplex area is so car-dominated, in part, because it is set up by law to prevent any sort of ‘mixed use’ development (e.g. business, housing, retail, shopping, etc.) — it is ‘single use’ (e.g. business, office parks, etc.). SmartCode is just one way of allowing towns to grow smarter without having to reinvent the wheel — think of it as a design pattern for zoning laws (@see video of Andres Duany of DPZ). It should be noted that the auto-centricity of the Googleplex is completely predictable — it was designed, by law, to be car-dominated. The City of Mountain View should look to change existing zoning laws to allow mixed-use development (i.e. to allow the Googleplex to become less car-dominated, and therefore, a decent place/area to live) — but the City should not do so without guarantees of bicycle infrastructure, and a plan to connect the Googleplex to the rest of Mountain View — i.e. Castro Street/downtown Mountain View — and to connect it for pedestrians, bicyclists, transit, etc. Right now the only realistic connection between the Googleplex and Caltrain/downtown MV/VTA light rail/Castro/El Camino Real is by car — that ain’t gonna fly. The 101 presents a huge problem.

Google told us last month that they were working on bike directions, but they didn’t make a big deal out of telling us how to help. Well, I could be mistaken, but it looks like the offer to ‘partner’ on bike directions (and all sorts of ‘mappy’ features) is just sitting there, waiting for folks to get to it.

If you speak ‘nerd’, or know someone who does, then the rest of this could apply to you. There are some high-level FAQs about data formats, and a link to a form to fill-out if you have some data and you want to partner with Google to get your data integrated into Google Maps. The data we most care about here, of course, is bike-related data — bike lanes, routes, paths, etc.

Who has bike data? Well, cities and bicycle coalitions, probably — and/or the folks who hold the copyrights on maps/data, if they are copyrighted. [Of course you know how we feel about this type of data -- it should be free free free.]

If you are a planner/GIS-type person in the Bicycle division of the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency, then maybe you can help Google get us some bike directions — just fill out the form and see what happens. Could the good folks of our local bike coalition (the folks who put out the bike map) possibly work with Google to get this done? Got me — there’s one way to find out. [SFBC is up to 11,000+ members, now.]

Whatever city or town you live in, do your best to convince someone — I’d start with your local walk/bike/transit advocacy organization, if you have one — to contact the city/town/municipal government and ask them to follow up on this.

What does bike data look like? A lot of it is over my head, but we can look at Google’s “Complete Map Content Specifications“. There are lots of details, of course, but the human-understandable parts are very cool. If you’ve wondered what the GTFS format for bikes was going to be, we may have our first draft.

Can the data format handle wide curbs vs. bike lanes vs. one-ways vs. two-ways vs. high-speed arterials vs. bike boulevards vs. contraflow lanes vs. buffered bike lanes? I’m not sure, but it looks like it’s pretty flexible and can handle most if not all of the crazy configurations and complexities that occur in road networks.

New roads and bicycle and pedestrian paths

Google is presently accepted two specific types of network data: new roads, and bicycle and pedestrian paths.

• Use a segment-based representation: a segment is part of a road between two intersections. We can not accept roads that have multiple intersections hanging off of them.
• The street format is similar in many ways to the address format, with the exception of the different street number format.
• All address ranges should be specified relative to the the geometry (that is, the right side is to the right of the path from the start of the segment to the end of the segment).

The following fields are useful for roads and bike and pedestrian paths. Fields marked as “optional for BP” are not necessary for bike and pedestrian paths:

Field	Description	Example values
ID	A unique and stable identifier for the road segment	Any alphanumeric string (e.g. “14232514″)
AR_RT_FR (optional for BP)	Starting address on right hand side, relative to geometry	42
AR_RT_TO (optional for BP)	Ending address on right hand side, relative to geometry	58
AR_LT_FR (optional for BP)	Starting address on left hand side, relative to geometry	41
AR_LT_TO (optional for BP)	Ending address on left hand side, relative to geometry	57
ST_NAME	Street Name and Type (the words Street, Avenue, etc., can be abbreviated)	Powell St
ST_NM_A1 (optional)	Alternative Name 1	U.S. 101
ST_NM_A2 (optional)	Alternative Name 2
NEIGHBH (optional)	Neighborhood Name	Union Square
CITY	City Name	San Francisco
STATE	State (Two Letter Abbreviation)	CA
ZIP (optional for BP)	5-digit zip code	94108
CNT_NAME (optional)	County Name	San Francisco
CNT_FIPS (optional)	County code (see here and here.)	06075
ONEWAY (optional for BP)	One-wayness – relative to the direction of geometry	“None”, “To-From”, and “From-To”
PRIORITY (optional for BP)	We would consider the following levels: interstate, federal/state highway, expressway, minor arterial, local, not intended for public traffic.	minor arterial
LANES (optional)	Number of lanes	2
SURFACE (optional)	Road Surface	Paved or Unpaved
SPEED_LM (optional)	Speed limit in MPH	55
AVG_SP (optional)	Average Speed	25
CAR (optional)	Cars are allowed on this segment?	Allowed, Small vehicles only (mopeds etc), None, Disallowed
PEDEST (optional)	Whether the segment allows bikes, and if so, what type it is	One of: Trail, Walkway, Mall, Sidewalk, Wide Shoulder, None, Disallowed
BIKE (optional)	Whether the segment allows bikes, and if so, what type it is	One of: Trail, Bike Lane, Wide Shoulder, Recommended, None, Disallowed
SEPARATED (optional)	Whether the road is separated by a barrier in the middle	Y/N
TURN_R (optional)	Turn Restrictions (or see below for exact format)	Freeform text
ELEVATION (optional)	If the road is elevated, or a bridge or a tunnel	One of: bridge, tunnel, overpass, underpass

We are happy to accept turn restrictions as freeform text to make it easier for people to submit data as turn restriction formats can be very complicated. We can accept turn restrictions in any format. However, to assist, here is a model format that would typically be delivered as a CSV file or a DBF file:

Field	Description	Example
FROM_ID	The ID (see the id column above of a road segment) of the segment where the turn restriction starts	14232514
FROM_END	The end of the segment the turn restriction applies to relative to its geometry.	Either “FROM” or “TO”
TO_ID	The ID (see the id column of a road segment) of the segment where the turn restriction ends	14232599
TO_END	The end of the segment the turn restriction applies to relative to its geometry	Either “FROM” or “TO”
MODE	The mode of transportation the limitation applies to.	Either “ALL”, “PEDESTRIAN”, “CAR”, “TRUCK”, “BUS” or “NON-HOV”
START_TM	The start time of the turn restriction, in 24 hour notation. Leave this and END_TM blank for permanent restriction	06:00
END_TM	The end time of the turn restriction, in 24 hour notation. Leave this and START_TM blank for permanent restriction	10:00
TYPE	Type of turn restriction	Either “NO LEFT TURN”, “NO RIGHT TURN” or “NO U-TURN”

Special thanks to The Tri-State Transportation Campaign (TSTC) (wiki), who just blogged about our petition (thanks, y’all!), and in doing so, they implored us to assist Google if our help was requested. The TSTC is sort of a group of transportation/environmental/sustainability superheroes and their respective organizations from the New York, New Jersey, and Connecticut areas (the ‘Tri-State Area’). They work on all the sorts of things we care about, and it seems like lots of important people have worked with them or for them at one point or another. [Janette Sadik-Khan was on their Board of Directors.] It was their blog post that made me re-examine Google’s Data Format/Submission site.

Congratulations, y’all! 50,000 signatures!

We hit that number about a week or so ago, thanks to ‘Jessica’ — the 50,000^th signature.

Shortly after we hit the big 50k mark, Google made a small announcement on their LatLong blog:

The best part about this new dataset is that we’ve been able to add a lot of new, detailed information to Google Maps – information that helps people better explore and get around the real world. For example, college students will be pleased to see maps of many campuses; and cyclists will now find many more trails and paths to explore. Soon we even plan on providing you with biking directions to take advantage of this new data. Of course, in the true Google spirit of “launch and iterate,” we plan to work with more data sources to add new features in the map.

Now we’re all curious to see the first cut. If there is a city or organization working with Google to provide them actual bike-specific street data (say, on the relative ‘bikiness’ of certain streets, Class I/II/III, contra-flow routes, etc.), I haven’t heard about it yet — but that’s not saying much, as I’m usually the last to know.

Ride the City, who originally provided mapping directions in New York City, followed by Chicago, now provide bike directions for Austin — that bike-crazy town smack dab in the middle of Texas:

Even if you haven’t been there, you might have heard that Austin is great for bicycling. According to the bike gurus, the League of American Bicyclists, Austin is the only city in the whole state of Texas worthy enough to receive a ranking in their Bicycle Friendly Community program. (The City comes in as the 15th best U.S. city for bicycling, and for that it gets a silver badge.)

Well, we’re hopeful that bike riding in the Lone Star state is going to get even better today as we launch Ride the City – Austin: www.ridethecity.com/austin. Put your hands together!

We’d like to thank all those who helped during the tweaking and clean up of the data to improve the routes. We especially thank Nathan Wilkes and Jason Fialkoff, both of Austin’s Bicycle Program, and bike advocate Tom Wald. These guys gave excellent feedback and helped to comb through the routes to make sure the most common local routes are accurate. Thanks guys. (Some day we’ll show you one of Nate’s hand-drawn maps, really cool.)

We hope that Ride the City – Austin will make bike riding a little bit easier in another great American biking town. So pass it on and, remember, if you test a route and find a glitch or a better way please come back to rate it/give comments on the “Feedback” tab so we can continue to improve the site.

Notice they’ve made the switch from Google Maps tiles to OpenStreetMap tiles. Because the OpenStreetMap tiles have fewer of the yellows and other bright colors of Google Maps, your bike route is easier to see — at least it seems that way to me. So, that’s a big plus.

Props to everyone who got it going.

Austin is a great town, and it just got a bit greater. 

Give it a whirl!

Built by a $1 million federal grant to Greater Chicago’s regional transit agency, the RTA, this planner will eventually/allegedly include car, bike, walk, and mass transit directions. Right now — no bike directions.  

Read more about it, here.

Or, just go check it out for yourself at http://goroo.com/.

Google Maps Mania tells us about Google Japan’s Street View Trike (adult tricycle). It’s in Japanese, but we love the idea!

Hopefully we’ll be getting some awesome ‘street views’ of walk and bike paths. After that, we’ll need the bike directions to go with them.

Google UK is doing some of the same, but their press release seems to suggest the project is not so much about shooting non-street paths, but popular tourist destinations. We’ll see.