Google Bike Directions Are Now Live!
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.
tried two routes from my house
West Chester to Kennett Square PA
West Chester to Coatesville PA
both went right down major highways, both routes were terrible and not roads that are for biking
the WC to Kennett went down RT 1 Baltimore Pike, a deadly road for a cyclist
WC to Coatesville went right down RT 322, another deadly road for cyclists
1It’s great to see that all your efforts here finally paid off. Congrats!
I noticed that the google blog directly referenced to the inspiration of your work write at the top of their announcement.
http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2010/03/biking-directions-added-to-google-maps.html
I was checking out some of my favorite biking routes around Flagstaff, AZ and how Google assessed them. The route was close to what I do though it missed some of the finer points.
Overall, my question is, are Google Map’s biking directions a game changer that will help propel cycling infrastructure forward as a whole?
2http://www.utilitycycling.org/2010/03/google-bike-there-directions/
thanks for the update, Libby. I’m curious what you would suggest as a better route, and why?
it seems like the area has no bike lanes. the recommended roads/highways at least appear to have a shoulder of some type for most of the way.
the backcountry roads have no shoulders, and some seem to have double-yellow-no-passing lines.
i’m not sure which routing option i’d prefer, but interested to hear your preferences and preferred routes.
3You must be mistaken… Google maps for bikes is nowhere available today. None of the links I have found provide for a bicycle method. I live in Portland, OR. Has Google pulled the app???
4i looked at the 3 suggested routes for each of those trips
WC to Kennett PA
WC to Coatesville PA
none of the routes would be good for bikers. WC to Coatesville, RT 322 is a high speed 2lane road with shoulders covered in broken glass and 2 large steel grate bridges with no shoulders, very very dangerous for cyclists, no one ever bikes on Rt 322
Rt 30 is a highway, plain and simple, again,I have never seen a cyclist on rt 30 or rt 322 and suggesting these routes to the unknowledgeable cyclist will put him in danger
WC to Kennett, The Popcopson route takes you down rt 52, again, high speed, poor shoulders, NO cyclists ever use this road
The rt 842 route is better and is very doable
I am part of the West Chester Cycling Club, we have over 250 cues on the site and NOT one uses the roads you have suggested
I am really not sure how Google can look at a map and then suggest bike routes without ever having biked on the roads
maybe you looked at them with your google street maps, who knows
WC to Kennet, RT 842, to Marlboro Springs to Marlbore Rd to Doe Run to Hickory to Willowdale to Street to Walnut and then right into Kennett
The back roads of Chester COunty are very safe for biking, very few cars, scenic and most pleasant
Your parameters for picking roads just does not work in Chester County, using the parameters of shoulders and passing lanes are not always the best for suggesting bike routes
I think Bike Routes is a good idea but not sure how you can pick routes having never biked in the area
most folks looking for biking in unknown areas use something like My Bikely
the routes are made by cyclists in the area who know the good roads
the idea of bike routes is exciting but I am not sure how it can work, no one has bike lanes here in the east, this is not Palo Alto
cyclists in areas such as mine, have learned how to find back roads that are not traveled by cars except a few locals
using bike lanes as a guide will not work in most places in the US, California and your area in particular, Mountain View, gives you a distorted view of biking for the rest of the country
Suggest you find local bike clubs and look at their cues if posted and go from there, but general road parameters is not going to work in my opinion
thanks for trying, but i think this idea needs some rethinking
libby maxim
5Thank you Google.
Thank you Peter and other petitioners.
Marc, I couldn’t see the page either until after I cleared my browser’s cache and re-loaded the page.
Libby, I agree that local knowledge is critical in getting around by bike. The infrastructure in America has been built with scant attention to bicyclists for the past 50 years. To survive while getting around by bike, you have to be savvy.
I would recommend using the “Report a Problem” feature. I have submitted lots of these in Oakland, CA. I noticed that Google fixed incorrect one-way streets within a week. I also submitted information about some rather obscure pedestrian walkways and stairways. They added these, but it took about a month.
I think that Google will be inundated with additions, corrections, and suggestions from users. Cyclists can be fanatical. I just hope they are ready for the deluge!
6Thank you Google for realizing that biking is a popular way to commute! The site so far seems to be getting mixed reviews in Chicago at The Chainlink, a social network for Chicagoland cyclist. Forum discussion here – http://www.thechainlink.org/forum/topics/google-introduces-bicycling
7I checked out the South Bay, San Francisco Bay Area, and on the whole not bad. You do have the Santa Clara County bikeways map to work off of, and I presume you did just that.
Missing is the Mary Avenue/280 Sunnyvale bike/ped overpass. Considering that we spent (wasted) $14M it should appear nonetheless.
There are only two paved roads accessible by bike in Rancho San Antonio Park. Map shows lots more. I guess the mtn bike trails will have to wait.
I would add Taylor Street through San Jose as a good route, all things considered.
Ray
8I designated a point A and B here in Central AR. Three routes. Each one very close to routes I take at one time or another.
I would suggest though that just as google refines search results based on most popular selections from past results so too could they modify their algorythm for selecting bike routes based on an end user click and drag modification of a google generated route that is saved and sent back to a product development team.
Also, another piece of logic that might be added; Since car travel on weekdays is predictably heavy in the AM toward large metro centers and vice-versa in the PM, generate a google bike route with this in mind. A 5 lane cross section road (widely used in Central AR) would be too busy for all but the hardiest of cyclist during rush hours but OK for opposite direction travel at the same time.
All in all a good product. Very smart start. If I lived in an area for 5 or more years and always wondered where I might ride to get to work this product can give me some potential routes. This coupled with being familiar with the ebb and flow of traffic makes safe road riding safest.
Last question. Where do we submit information regarding local trails not marked on google maps? Problem report?
Good job
9Today we’ve added biking directions and extensive bike trail data to Google Maps for the U.S.
10Google never stops to amaze me! This is awesome. Can’t wait to see this
Don’t know if it’s better where you are, but I have that gut sinking feeling that this is one of those regrettable efforts to be “bike friendly” without actual knowledge. Reminds me of our campus “bike path” system (http://www.flickr.com/photos/gcziko/sets/72057594104077802/ ) which is happily being improved (separate paths being worked out of the equation for the most parts).
Figuring out good bicycle routes with algorithms is a tad like translating that way … except in this case I don’t even think the algorithms are particularly good.
For my commute, it has 27 turns in 6.7 miles — half of them left turns — and lots of it is on brick roads. The roads I don’t think are too bad, but they’re not the ones I take. Seems it does even worse in New York:
See http://www.informationweek.com/news/healthcare/patient/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=223500062
It’s a nice thing that cycling is considered important enough for Google to pretend to make an effort — preposterous that they think this is “doing it right” — if novices try their routes, they’ll be very reassured taht yes, we cyclists are NUTS. I’m willing to bet that they are of the “we need to make things better for biking – lets build more bike paths for the children to ride on!” school.
11To those who are not satisfied with the quality of Google’s data I would suggest you take a look at the Open Street Map Project:
Here’s The OSM Cycle Map view of San Francisco
Bike Route Directions Are Available On Cloudmade.com
It’s the Wikipedia of maps. Anyone can contribute. And anyone can export the map data to use as they like. Current renderings may not be as easy on the eyes as Google Maps, but the data is often more up to date, more accurate, and richer than anything Google will ever provide, especially for cycling and walking. If it’s not better in your area, get involved and make it so! There’s no need to wait for Google to get around to fixing the error you told them about a month ago. Fix it now on Open Street Map and see the results instantly.
12agree with last comments, the bike route idea is not well thought out, for such a bunch of big brains at Google, they really flopped on this one
the routes are useless and most put cyclists on dangerous roads
better off using Map my Ride or My Bikely or buy a GPS
libby
13What about Rails-to-Trails Conservancy? They were the official content provider for all of the trails, yet you have no mention of them. http://www.railstotrails.org/news/newsroom/pressReleases/archives/20100310_DC_RTC_Google_Bike_Directions.html
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