So, this means if you find a mistake in your transit data - boom - you just update your zip file and it’ll be reflected in the live Google Maps/Transit application soon. That’s pretty cool.

I’m hoping the same could be true for any bicycle directions service - if we get it created. The only thing it seems we need to worry about is making the correct data available as soon/quickly as we can/want.

So, the paper PDFs look really pretty when you lay them out on a table, but their usefulness to people - I just think it’s not what it needs to be. And part of that, of course, is just the medium - it’s difficult to update expensive paper maps.

But digital data is easy to update.

The Google Transit Feed Specification (GTFS) makes it easier (if not easy) for governments/municipalities/transportation systems to update the schedule/route data - all they need to do, as far as I understand it, is update their feed file. We should have the same thing available for bicycle routes.

http://code.google.com/transit/spec/transit_feed_specification.html

I’m gonna look into this - see how often an update can/does happen for the GTFS.

My city does, but my brand new navigation system doesn’t. So I submitted a few corrections. Unfortunately, it’s too late to make it into this year’s map update, and maybe next year’s also (Navteq seems to be extremely slow about updating their maps).