It’s all over the (map/bike) news: Google added the long anticipated Bicycling layer to Google Maps, which shows bicycle facilities and enables bicycle directions. Excellent!
It’s a great move for bicycle advocacy and helps increasing awareness about cycling as serious urban transportation mode. According to that blog post on the Google Lat Long Blog, the Google Maps engineers developed some solid bicycle routing algorithms. The data is apparently coming from Rails-to-Trails, public sources and Google’s Street View and Imagery. In the areas I viewed, all data was (c) Google, which is, after we saw the parcel layer (c) by Google, not surprising at all.
Nice side effect: bicycling is available in Google Maps API V3 (which recently made it into OpenLayers).
Even though the bicycle layer looks pretty impressive at a first glance – lot’s of green lines in the Boston area – it’s clearly in beta stage. For my daily commute it suggested three basically realistic alternatives, only with 1 to 3 blocks detours from the route I usually take. My usual route includes going up a quiet one-way street which Google doesn’t suggest, instead it would send me to the car packed 4-lane highway.
Playing around with the marker, the routes get a little funkier:
- It’s not the shortest/quickest route. Bike trails are clearly weighted very high in the algorithm.
- You’re allowed to ride through the Boston Common, but not through the Public Garden as the algorithm suggests; missing restriction.
- The shown bike facilities in Cambridge are pretty messy and Boston looks way better than it actually is – Mass Ave preferred for bicycling? That’s one of the craziest streets you could possibly ride on.
- At Kendall the algorithm clearly gets confused with some turn restrictions and would send you up and down the street.
Despite those few glitches, Google has done an amazing job in introducing bicycle transportation to Google Maps – very exciting!
