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Falk on Mar 20th 2008 at 8:26 am web

Bike there?

Maybe it’s a good idea to ask Google to add some safe bicycle routes to GoogleMaps. But why don’t just do it crowd-based on your own with available tools such as OpenStreetMap? I don’t get it, yet. (via Michael Gomez)

3 responses so far

3 Responses to “Bike there?”

  1. # Peteron Mar 20th 2008 at 9:30 am

    Part of the idea is to legitimize cycling as a real transportation alternative, and that means giving it equal access on one of the most popular mapping applications in existence. People who would never have previously considered cycling for transportation would be exposed to the possibility for the first time.

  2. # Falkon Mar 20th 2008 at 10:03 am

    Well, how about public transportation then? Don’t you think Google should add PubTrans, too?
    Maybe someone should define a standard for train/bus schedules? Well, I think it already exists, but I only know it for Europe (for example the german railway company also provides you information on trains in Italy, Spain, France Portugal, Sweden, Poland, Netherlands, etc. - they don’t do that by hand, I’m sure).
    I really appreciate promoting bicycles. But I’m not sure whether it’s the right approach to tell people that they could reconsider their behaviours in getting from A to B.

  3. # Michael Gomezon Mar 20th 2008 at 6:45 pm

    Hi Falk :)

    Google maps has information for public transit for many cities, not many in Europe, though.

    http://www.google.com/transit

    I am not familiar with the technical details, but I am pretty sure that Google maps is shaping up to be the most usable, free wayfinding application in the world. On top of that, no organization has resources like Google to do bicycle routing, and I am almost certain that it is nearly impossible to do effective wayfinding with the API (for example, I enter my address, and another address, and the system tells me which way to go) — you will notice that almost all Google Maps mashups are basically overlays of data, not as complex as wayfinding.

    So basically while I think there are alternative ways of doing it, nothing quite compares to building it into Google maps. :)

    Good to hear from you

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