Bike Pittsburgh

Google Maps bike petition

Petition to encourage Google to add a "Get There By Bike" feature to the core Google Maps system, to complement the Driving Directions and Use Public Transit features.

http://googlemapsbikethere.org/

RE: Google Maps bike petition

I wonder if they would use the Bike Pittsburgh recommended routes? Would Google be able to do this with uniformity or if they would have to work with each individual city/bike advocacy organization? I could see this as a huge undertaking. Probably why Google only has 20 cities or so worldwide for Google Transit.

RE: Google Maps bike petition

this is such a good idea

RE: Google Maps bike petition

As of today there are now 24941 Total Signatures. Amazing!

RE: Google Maps bike petition

Google Mapps apparently uses several factors in determining a route. First, of course, is the most direct path and second takes speed limit into account. This is what pushes the routes onto highways.

The transit routs are a variation of this. Instead of having a set of all roads, the routing is done with a subset of only the routes available by bus.

Bike routing would need some additional factors overlaid on the all roads map that takes into account traffic volumes, on-street parking, lane width, incline and any number of other factors deemed appropriate. These factors would need to be boiled down into a formula to filter the route through. This formula would produce a speed-limit-like dataset that, when the bike routeing algorithm is run gives priority to the factors that favor bicycles (as opposed to the standard routing that favors speed).

In some ways, the Pittsburgh Bike map has already done much of this by taking all the factors (and the practical knowledgebase of cyclists) and turned it into a graphical dataset. This would need to be turned into a mathematical dataset so that Google Maps could do bike routing. That's probably the toughest part of the entire endeavor.

On a related note, I've been playing with Google Earth and have taken the Pittsburgh Bike Map images here on the BikePGH site and overlaid them. The problem is that, unlike Google Maps, you can't just grab and shift a route.

I know one of the directors at Google Pittsburgh and have been trying to get a job there. So far, they're only hiring developers and not HelpDesk Monkeys like myself.