BIKEMONKEY

Man, I’ve been waiting for this for a while.

Google has now integrated bike paths, bike lanes, signed bike routes, and street gradients into their Google Maps interface. They released this new tool at the National Bike Summit in Washington DC yesterday. Gone are the days of planning a commute or ride, only to find yourself cheating death on a shoulderless, 4 lane speedway just because it’s the straightest line between point A and B. No more setting out for a six pack in a strange town only to find that the direct route between you and your High Lifes (High Lives?) has 1500 ft. of elevation gain. Best of all, we’re seeing yet another example of bikes being recognized as a real conveyance class in a way that’s not dictated purely by local government or market forces. A new surge of information is now, literally, in the palm of our hands for us to implement. Exciting stuff.

I gave it a swirl on a local route I do between my house, the Healdsburg field office, Bike Monkey headquarters, the climbing gym, and the Taylor Maid Farms coffee dispensary. Rather than having to adjust the route every couple of miles to keep me off busy, barely safe roads, I was given a route that would, by any measure, be a safe and pleasant way to get around. Rather than break down the geographic details, here’s how the end product scored, keeping my perspective to that of a new cyclist, barely familiar with local roads:

The Good: As stated above, cyclists were kicked off the busiest streets. A biggie right out of the gates. Bike lanes, paths, and routes are all represented graphically, so the user doesn’t have to assume Google knows best. There’s actually off-street information there and one can tell when they go from a regular road to an off-street path onto a street with a bike lane then on a designated bike route with no painted bike lane. For someone in a strange town, this is the first and last stop for getting around by bike. Conceivably, depending on the type of trip one’s taking, one could avoid renting a car with this tool. Huge.

The Less Good: While street gradients are taken into consideration, there’s no representation of them on the user interface. In other words, you can’t see where the steep hills are, you just have to trust that Google is keeping you on the flattest route possible. This is great if you’re not interested in hills and/or visiting a steep town like San Francisco or Seattle, but sometimes you’re looking to throw in a climb/descent or you just want to see what hills you’re avoiding on your route.

There’s also the expectation that one can give oneself over to this utility and it will always spit out the safest, most direct route. That’s just not the case. In my trial route, there were roads suggested that I don’t care to traverse, mainly for reasons of localized driver behavior, terrain, and lack of shoulder/crappy road conditions. The route suggested bike paths sometimes that took me too far out of the way than I was willing to go. The takeaway here is that this tool is no substitute for local knowledge. Want a perfect route? Ask someone who knows. Does this still work as a great tool for folks are visiting an area or may be new to getting around their hometown in a bike? Absolutely.

The Bad: Uh. I dunno. Google is evil? Because they give us buttloads of information? That we like to use? A lot? That’s already out there? That they’re just repackaging for our convenience? Maybe.

The Big Picture: This is where the exciting part is, folks. Never mind that one of the most utilized companies in the world has opted to provide cycling-specific information at great expense to them because they see a business value in it. At the end of the day, it’s now that much easier to get out and ride your bike instead of riding in your car. A crucial argument to not riding just took a major hit: it’s now safer and more convenient. Getting people out on routes that are designed to facilitate cycling is a critical missing link in fostering cycling as a viable transportation option. In “Field of Dreams,” Ray Kinsella constructed a baseball field, and a bunch of ghostly, womanizing baseball legends crawled out of his cornfield, thanks to a voice in his head that mumbled “if you build it, they will come.” In the real world, bike infrastructure gets built and, because there’s no central location for the information, they often become under-utilized. It’s a sad state of things when this information has to be so convenient for people in order for it to be used, but it’s a fact and yelling at people to get off their asses hasn’t worked so far. This tool could, maybe more than any other tool to date, lead to a real change in our communities. One can hope, at least.

Give it a try at http://maps.google.com/biking. It’s in beta and I’m not sure how well it works on an iPhone, but I assume it’s seamless, mostly because it usually is. They’ve got screenshots, FAQs, and bike stats over here: https://sites.google.com/a/pressatgoogle.com/bikemaps/. Your town may not have this bike map information available on Google, but I’m guessing it’s because your town doesn’t track bicycle infrastructure. If that’s the case, you’ve got a bigger problem that I’m sure you’re working to address.