RSSGoogle Maps now generates bike routes
By Tim Conneally | Published March 10, 2010, 10:50 AM
Different modes of travel often require different routes to be taken. If you're walking somewhere, for example, you're not likely to take a highway to get there, and you have the distinct advantage of being able to go through certain structures that cars cannot. The same goes for biking. When someone is planning to get somewhere by bike, they're going to demand different routes. This is why the Google Maps team today announced that it has added bicycling directions to Google Maps.
Shannon Guymon, product manager for Google Maps said, "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."
Google has taken more than 12,000 miles of bike trail data from the Rails-to-Trails Conservancy's TrailLink.com database. The Washington, DC nonprofit has been collecting trail data since 2000, and has maps, pictures, descriptions, and listings for more than 30,000 miles of bike trails.
"The demand for trail maps and information has never been higher, especially as more people recognize biking as a viable, inexpensive and healthy alternative to driving," said Rails-to-Trails President Keith Laughlin today.
But simply having the data on hand is completely a different matter from the whole business of machine-suggested routes. Google had to incorporate trail data into its routing algorithm, include metropolitan areas with designated bike lanes, and include roads that have been recommended by other cyclists, all the while taking into consideration the business about certain roads. All that is just to determine the most biker-accommodating paths according to safety. There's also the whole issue of hills.
"Our biking directions are based on a physical model of the amount of power your body has to exert given the slope of the road you're biking on," said Google software engineer John Leen. "Assuming typical values for mass and for wind resistance, we compute the effort you'll require and the speed you'll achieve while going uphill. We take this speed into account when determining the time estimate for your journey, and we also try hard to avoid routes that will require an unreasonable degree of exertion." Likewise, the algorithm avoids routes that have too much downhill travel as well so the ride is balanced.
Today's launch of Google Maps for bikes is sort of the opposite of a development from last year, an Android app called My Tracks which targeted runners, hikers, and cyclists. Instead of suggesting routes, My Tracks collected live GPS statistics from the user's smartphone and mapped out total/moving time, (average) speed, distance, and elevation profile on Google Maps as the trips were being made.
Google Maps for bicycles is live right now.
Like most of what Google does, it is incomplete and introduced in an almost useless state. In Portland (Largest Bike city in the U.S. people are mocking how it sends you down alleyways and major boulevards while ignoring purposeful bike streets.
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|I always hungry to know something about Google.Google this new Bike routes gave a another chance to know more about Google and Stagy.
http://www.articlesbase....eanse-work-1963744.html
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|What in the f*** does this have to do with Google Maps?!
Somebody PLEASE tell me!!!
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|No. You are a lost cause.
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|My standalone Garmin Nuvi 855 GPS unit has been doing this long before Google and unlike a cell phone the maps are stored on my Garmin's built in flash memory.
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|"unlike a cell phone the maps are stored on my Garmin's built in flash memory."
Yea that sucks...means you gotta keep paying to get those map updates...it's nice to have the most up to date map on your phone all the time, free. :)
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|Worthless. The first path I requested takes me down the most dangerous road in our city when there are shorter and safer routes. The car route was the only viable option. They obviously don't use any criteria besides avoiding major roadways.
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|it would be nice if they generated truck routes for those of us with commercial vehicles. I haven't seen anyone on a bicycle in years. google fail
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|Where do you live? I see people on bikes daily in the Midwest. This is a good idea but it definitely needs to be improved, it suggested a non-bike friendly road for a route I created.
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|You probably rolled them over.
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|Very nice although it makes me think google maps would be better of going somewhere more generalized in it's mapping approach.
Generating slope and other factors of the landscape into a navmesh (http://www.ai-blog.net/archives/000152.html) instead of waypoints.
This way a path can be generated more flexible and other transportation ways with other requirements can also be recalculated very efficiently.
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|Very cool. I had to go try it and it did direct me via a bike trail to get from my house to downtown Portland.
It would be nice if it included elevation gains and losses so that you knew what you were up against. As they send their streetmap bikes out, they could gather exact elevation info, but I'd also think they could use the terrain data that they have now for rough figures.
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|I don't think measuring elevation from the bike had much point. That would be done by pressure change (unreliable) or by mapping position against existing topo data. The idea would be a good feature though.
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|UBC launched this in conjunction with Google a while ago in Vancouver: http://cvtest.soeh.ubc.ca/olympics.aspx. You can enter maximum hill grade to avoid hills, it knows about the city designated bike routes, and bike crossing signals. Really quite good. Hope the generic service is as good, I use it quite frequently.
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|Works well if you don't mind gravel roads. Those of us who ride 22 or 23 mm tires are going to find this less than helpful.
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|In Vancouver all the routes are paved. Outside there are unpaved bike routes, not sure how to exclude those, but would be nice.
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|Sorry. I should have given some context. I live in South Dakota and much of our riding is in rural areas. We frequently head out on 40-50 mile training rides in preparing for long distance events. My wife and I are planning a 300 miles ride during the last week of May and I was hoping this would be of assistance. However most of the route this charted is on gravel roads. Not helpful.
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|I agree with the Beta and a lot of work, but I surely applaud Google for leading the way. It will take a lot of people like us to help make this a real powerful tool for everybody. Rather than beat Google up for the thought and effort to do the right thing and offer this, we ALL need to facilitate this for the better good. Yes I tried it yesterday and it it took me out of the way, but it also showed me several bike paths and a bridge I didn't know about even though it didn't put me on them right away. Bike paths and foot routes are just that, many are not documented and here is the chance to fix the problem. They do gibve you a place to add your imput so it will continually improve. Let's all work on making this a stellar tool instead of looking the other direction and whining.
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|I agree with the Beta and a lot of work, but I surely applaud Google for leading the way. It will take a lot of people like us to help make this a real powerful tool for everybody. Rather than beat Google up for the thought and effort to do the right thing and offer this, we ALL need to facilitate this for the better good. Yes I tried it yesterday and it it took me out of the way, but it also showed me several bike paths and bridge I didn't know about even though it didn't put me on them right away. Bike paths and foot routes are just that, many are not documented and here is the chance to fix the problem. They do provide a place for YOUR input to improve the product. Let's all work on making this a stellar tool instead of looking the other direction an d whining.
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