The League of American Bicyclists and Google have announced that Google has implemented Google Maps' most requested feature: bicycle routing.

Google maps will now generate routes for bicycles and will show bicycle paths, lanes, and routs on its maps.

I tried one quick route and it seemed to work. It routed me on the Greenway which it didn't used to know about.

Good stuff, I think.

It looks like it works well for inner metro stuff and not so much for suburbs. It doesn't recognize most of the bike paths I take to work (11.5 miles, Roseville to Coon Rapids, about 9 miles of my route is off road paved bike path and 2.5 miles of bike lane).

Also, I mapped out a ride a make occasionally to the general area of Crosby Lake Park. One of the routes it gave me was to ride on the shoulder of highway 280.

I am sure it will get better with time. It looks like a pretty cool feature that still needs a little common sense.

I tried it for my commute.
It came up with almost the same route I take, including the cut through the median of Highway 51.
Interesting.

Hmmm....I tried it with my commute as well. On the up side, it picked up the bike trails in Langton Lake Park (Roseville), on the down side, the basemap still has the MDT flagged as a rail line, so I was routed onto CTY 88. An interesting feature however.

e.

For my commute it had me riding on hwy 55 rather than glenwood ave, which is kind of surprising since glenwood is designated as a bike route on most maps (I can't remember if it has signs, tho). It also does not have the Luce Line trail encoded.

FWIW, a year ago or so when people were talking about sending a petition to google on this, i was kind of a naysayer about the possibilities given that there are a lot of short cuts and things that bikes can take advantage of that are very difficult to quantify in a map. (For example, the directions don't know that on a bike you can cross Hwy 55 at Glenwood and keep going, whereas you cannot in a car).

well, even though this first version isn't 100%, i stand corrected. And hats off to google for giving it a shot and putting the resources behind this project.

Here is the NYT story:
http://www.nytimes.com/external/readwri ... 88891.html

Google's official post on the topic:
http://google-latlong.blogspot.com/2010 ... -bike.html

I'm even a bigger Google Maps fanboy now.

Needs some work.

Pretty interesting. I plugged a couple of my common routes in and it gave me decent alternatives to the routes I would normally take. If nothing else this would give you a rough idea of how to get from point A to point B utilizing as many designated bike routes as possible. I can see myself using this.

Oops, still has 2nd and Marquette listed as bike lane routes, not bike prohibited due to transit routes...

I thought I just read on the Strib website last week that they are fine with riding on 2nd/Marquette in the right lane b/c it is wider than a normal lane. I don't have time to find the article right now though.

The bus lanes on Marq2 are closed to all "authorized vehicles" besides buses during peak hours on weekdays. You should be able to bike on either street, heading either way during non-rush hours.

Google maps biking commercial:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JN5_NBSu7Lw

Also, please remember that, just like many other awesome Google features, this is being opened to the public while still in beta. Yes, there are still kinks, but this is going to be great. As a Blackberry user, I am greatly looking forward to be able to use this feature while I'm on the road.

Don't tell us about being routed the wrong way down a one-way. If you find a problem, right click on it and select "Report a problem". These reports are reviewed by Google and should be fixed in around a month by my experience.


It will be interesting to see what becomes of companies like bikeverywhere and Cyclopath.

Thanks for the tip. I'll keep that in mind as I traverse this great information superhighway we call the internet. 9_9

True, but it's listed in google as a route with a bike lane. It should not be a preferred route.

And I'm not sure that even with it being legal to ride all but a few hours of the day means that cyclists will use it very often. And it doesn't make it safe for the majority of riders.

So, yeah, legal if you are a pretty ballsy cyclist that is fine holding two lanes with buses, but not something that most recreational or newer cyclists are going to go for.