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!
If I had to think of a solution to start creating a bicycle routing system, I’d do exactly what The San Francisco County Transportation Authority has done: create smart phone apps, gather information where cyclists are riding, data mine those tracks and build route suggestions on top of that knowledge.
Bicycle routing is in my opinion far more complex than car routing. Car routing is mostly based on well known and documented rules, also known as road traffic regulations. Mix in estimated traffic figures, average speeds and fuel consumptions and you get pretty decent car directions.
For cyclists, a similar rule set exists, but it’s maybe a little more, let’s call it, elastic. Cyclists use short-cuts, turn where cars can’t, go against traffic, ride through parks and on poorly documented trails. High traffic doesn’t mean slowdown for cyclists. They ride by on the bike lane on the right side of a traffic jam at almost the same speed as without traffic. But high traffic creates a security risk some cyclists aren’t comfortable with taking and rather choose a different route.
A perfect route from A to B for speedy messengers doesn’t necessarily mean it’s also an ideal route for kids. For your daily commute you probably pick another route than for weekend rides, even though it connects the same points.
Bicycle routing criteria is manifold, sometimes psychological, hard to measure and to quantify. Researching how cyclists are going, for what purpose and under what conditions, is a very smart way to get started on that topic.
Who needs ArcGIS Network Analyst and TeleAtlas Multinet when you can ask Google Maps with a few lines of JavaScript?
The new Google Maps feature adds drag&drop to routing: adjust start, end or any point on the route as you like and Google Maps recalculates your route on the fly.
Apart from the amazing usability, I think for small and middle sized companies who are dealing with the traveling salesman problem, the Google Maps routing API is in the meantime quite an interesting option to licensing and maintaining full GIS routing applications and the databases behind.
The recently launched Austrian public transport directions search named Scotty (german only) has been slightly updated (via Interaction Blog):
By clicking the buttons Karte right next to the search form fields, a map will open where users are able to pinpoint their start and end addresses. So no need to enter the addresses any longer, keep your hand on the mouse and ask Scotty by clicking on maps.
I prefer that method a lot over entering addresses and then getting options of possible addresses because of misspellings or double street and place names.
There is still some potential for usability improvement left: it would be easier to merge the currently two necessary steps into a single one by showing only one map where users can pinpoint both, start and end point. And of course, a bit more fancy AJAX mapping would be nice in 2007 too…
Yesterday the Austrian Federal Railways (ÖBB) launched Scotty, a new public transport routing application. It covers Austrian city transport systems, bus lines, inland waterway transport and ferries, European railways and most of swiss bus transport. Until the UEFA EURO 2008 in Austria and Switzerland it’ll include 100% of Swiss and Austrian public transport (Graz and bus lines in Tyrol still need to be added).
The database works pretty impressive: you enter start and end address, Scotty returns the closest public transport stations (including walking distance) and finds the fastest route through all possible public transport systems (including public and private busses, railways, subways, trams, ferries, etc.). I think it’s pretty impressive to combine all that information and data sources from various operators and companies into one single application. That’s probably the most difficult part.
On the output side you get textual information as list where to go and where and when to change the train, bus, etc. Additionally you can open an overview map of your entire route or some detailed maps of station surroundings.
Now here is still some room for improvements on usability and mapping features. In times of AJAX, tiling or vector graphics driven web mapping I would expect a user-friendlier map.
Besides and considering Scotty to support and guide a huge amount of visitors in 2008 some more innovative features would be useful too.
Like reverse geocoding and trigger routing directly in the map for instance: I bet the chance that a visitor can pinpoint his hotel and the places to visit is higher than he is able to spell the german address correctly. Similar to the routing solution on Live Local, which is very well done btw.
Aside from being very much information to understand in quite short time, I’m wondering what continuously mobile bandwith you may need to get all those 3D Google Earth maps into your car. (via BB)
The city of Vienna offers a well-built bicycle infrastructure. In September 2005 the 1000th bicycle-track-kilometer was finished. If weather is fine it’s the fastest way to move within the inner districts (1.-9.) of Vienna. I think its share in the viennese modal-split must be around 4-5% now. According to the Transportation Master Plan it should increase up to 8% by 2020. On certain streets you’ll be able to count about 5.000-8.000 cyclists on a rainless day.
Since spring should be arriving within the next few weeks I thought that I’ll have a look if there are some new useful bicycle tracks available. Browsing through the city’s website I came across this service: Routing for cyclists.
As in any other routing service you enter a start/end location and the system calculates the best (shortest/fastest/cheapest) route for you. Like car routing systems consider parameters such as speed limits, fuel consumption, traffic volume, etc. this bicycle routing includes one-ways (in many one-ways cyclists are allowed to drive in both directions), slopes, bicycle tracks and low-traffic-volume roads in its calculation. Sounds pretty exciting for everyone who likes to go by bike in Vienna.
Just to do a short test I entered my home and work address and let the system calculate the best route. The result was surprising because I wouldn’t even had thought of choosing that way to my office. But the route makes sense, maybe it’s better than I’m thinking. When weather allows it I’ll give it a try.
I’m aware that only car navigation and routing is interesting for doing businesses in that market. The business of city governments is basically, among others, to attract residents. One of the “products” a city has to offer is quality of life. In terms of improving quality of urban life and urban transportation systems, increasing non-motorised modal split shares, services like the mentioned bicycle routing can be a valuable contribution.
Of course building more and better bicycle-oriented navigation and routing systems would be nice task for GIS experts too.