
Ok Google – it's time you discovered cyclists - pivip
https://www.cyklistbloggen.se/dear-google-its-time-for-cyclists/
======
Vinnl
It's time cyclists discovered OpenStreetMaps. The cyclist community, as far as
I can see (it's just a mode of transportation for me, so I'm not part of it),
has been doing an excellent job of making sure cycling routes are properly
mapped there. Doesn't solve the Street View problem, but you're really missing
out if you haven't tried it for navigation.

Even in the Netherlands, it's often better than Google Maps. And it can serve
as the basis for apps building on top of it like
[https://cycle.travel/](https://cycle.travel/).

~~~
Doctor_Fegg
cycle.travel's my project - thanks for the mention! Always happy to hear
suggestions and ideas.

It uses OpenStreetMap data plus a heavily customised instance of OSRM (Open
Source Routing Machine, a fast routeplanning engine). The routing "profile",
which calculates the weighting, is a few thousand lines of code alone, never
mind various other stuff like custom elevation calculations.

It's a great project to work on, and the best reward of all is when people
plan multi-day tours with it and say how much they've enjoyed the route.

~~~
ccvannorman
cycle.travel does not work on iOS. Loaded page, green popup, Starting from:
cycling to: I filled these out and pressed Find Route, nothing happens. Tried
selecting Circular route, press Find Route, nothing happens

~~~
Doctor_Fegg
Curious - works for me but would like to debug! Could you ping me the
start/end points you're entering? (info@cycle.travel if you don't want to post
them here.)

~~~
soperj
same thing happened to me on the home page (linux, firefox 66), but the actual
map pages works great.

------
gregkerzhner
Interesting article. One challenge though is that there are a lot more gray
areas in cycling than in driving. Driving is black and white - you want the
fastest route thats legally possible. With cycling, everyone's tolerance for
what is a good cycling road is different, and you are constantly making trade
offs between road quality and scenery, and distance.

The cycling directions in my town, for example, are great in the sense that
they take you on only bike paths with little cars. However, they are often 25%
longer than just taking the roads which also have bike lanes. I am comfortable
biking on the roads so I prefer the roads, but others might not be. Which set
of directions do you present? I guess you could have options for both like
"most scenic" and "most direct". However, there will always be people
complaining about routes being too roundabout or not safe enough because of
preference differences.

I think with cycling sometimes its best to just use the bike directions as a
starting off point and then explore from there. Hopefully you can be in a
place for long enough to discover the routes that fit you best and stick to
them. For me, thats actually a fun part of the activity.

~~~
dylan604
Most map apps allow some choices like 'avoid tolls', or 'avoid highways'.
Biking should/could be similar. Prefer bike paths vs bike lanes. To be fair,
it is hard for the Google Street view car to go down the bike lanes. Going to
need to rig up a bike with the camera rig. They've done it for hiking trails,
so why not?

~~~
londons_explore
> choices like 'avoid tolls', or 'avoid highways'

Those choices are _insanely_ expensive for Google to provide.

Every unique configuration of options has to be hosted by hundreds of servers
in each region. The cost of running the routing service is proportional to 2 ^
(the number of options). It's because everything has to be precomputed for
fast lookups, and the lookup tables for one set of options aren't valid for
another. See [1].

This is why Google hasn't added any more options in ~a decade. Even then, some
combinations of options use various approximations and in some cases don't
return the mathematically best result, or take longer to do so.

[1]:
[https://bib.irb.hr/datoteka/644571.MaueSandersMatijevic.pdf](https://bib.irb.hr/datoteka/644571.MaueSandersMatijevic.pdf)

~~~
lorenzhs
That paper is old and definitely not what Google Maps actually uses.
Techniques which people actually use (mostly Contraction hierarchies and CRP)
are much more compact than what you describe. Routing isn't just a table
lookup.

Google Maps' offline maps also include routing information. The downloads are
pretty small, which definitely excludes the more space-intensive algorithms.

~~~
morganherlocker
To be fair, contraction hierarchies are inflexible for exactly the reasons OP
described. CRP (aka multi-level dijkstra) is more flexible, but there's always
a trade off between query speed, pre-process/weight-update speed, and route
quality. These services are very expensive to run at global scale if you need
multi-modal or live congestion support.

~~~
lorenzhs
Customizable Contraction Hierarchies go a long way towards solving that,
they're quite similar to CRP with regards to both customization and query
time. Also, route quality isn't part of the trade-off: all of these methods
are exact.

I would argue that updating the routing algorithm's data structure isn't the
expensive part of reacting to live traffic. Getting and processing the raw
data sounds a lot harder than re-running the customization phase of routing
preprocessing.

------
noad
The thing about bike commuting for a couple decades is you quickly learn that
about half of the streets and and bike lanes are complete no go zone death
traps, and there is no good way to really build this knowledge aside from just
learning where you're going to get turned into repeatedly.

My city is super progressive and bike friendly, but even then it's effectively
suicide to try and use certain bike lanes and everyone just has this communal
knowledge.

~~~
r00fus
This is interesting. I know of places where it's dangerous to ride in my city
(for one of two reasons: 1. more accidents happen there statistically or 2.
narrow shoulder / no bike lane so it's unsafe unless you occupy a lane of
traffic) - but what do you consider "death traps"?

~~~
RandallBrown
One thing I've heard of is "The Right Hook". The bike lane is on the right
edge of the road. When a car is making a right turn, they don't look behind
them, make a right turn, and a cyclist crashes into them. Seattle has a
similar problem with some 1 way streets with a bike lane on the left side. At
least 1 person has died.

~~~
downerending
This is a fundamental traffic design failure. Prior to the existence of bike
lanes, motor vehicles never had to yield to something behind them (perhaps 30
or 50 meters behind them) while traversing an intersection.

In a busy intersection where one also has to attend to pedestrians, other
cars, etc., moving in different directions, trying to track what's going on
behind you can be almost impossible (and thus quite dangerous for all).

My "solution" to this problem is to carefully but fully occupy the bike lane
before making such a turn. Yeah, it's illegal, and draws lots of swearing (and
worse) from bicyclists. But there's just no other good way to keep everyone
safe.

~~~
mauvehaus
First off, thank you for doing what you're doing as a driver to prevent this
kind of crash. You're right, cyclists are blithering idiots about drivers
doing this, but it protects them even if they don't understand that.

As a cyclist (about 15,000 total miles, half touring, half commuting split
between Boston and Cleveland), my solution to the problem is to not design the
infrastructure in ways that sets cyclists up for the crash.

It is absolutely woefully bad design that cycle lanes on the right continue
all the way to the intersection. A solution that works for experienced
cyclists to to end the bike lane some distance before the intersection. This
forces a merge in a zone where there's no risk of a right hook. I float this
with the full understanding that it only works for cyclists who are capable of
making the merge at around 20mph/30kmph. And/or where the topography is
favorable.

No, you don't have to be able to sustain that speed, but being able to do it
in short bursts greatly expands your choices when riding in urban traffic.

My experience has been that nobody minds much at that speed, especially if you
merge back into the "bike lane" while you're still in the intersection but
after you're past the lanes people would be turning right into. Turning
traffic has to slow anyway to make the turn, after all.

This is a specific case of a general rule I try to apply when riding: Make
people choose to hit you; don't let them do it accidentally.

I would add that this is really only a valid strategy in _urban_ traffic where
even the major arterials only flow under 30mph because the density of turns
and stop lights prevents higher speeds. Major arteries in the suburbs or
around malls are a nightmare for riding because traffic generally flows a lot
faster. Some of the most hair-raising riding I've done was near a mall while
bike touring. It was basically unavoidable, and also absolutely miserable.

~~~
u801e
> A solution that works for experienced cyclists to to end the bike lane some
> distance before the intersection. This forces a merge in a zone where
> there's no risk of a right hook.

Unless the road has sufficient room for a bike lane of a minimum width of 5
feet, then you end up with a lot of close passes from cars in the right lane
and also end up riding in the door zone of parked cars to your right.

In those cases, it makes more sense to just ride in the center of the right-
most lane available for traffic and get more room from cars passing you. This
would work for streets that have multiple lanes for same direction traffic.

> Major arteries in the suburbs or around malls are a nightmare for riding
> because traffic generally flows a lot faster. Some of the most hair-raising
> riding I've done was near a mall while bike touring. It was basically
> unavoidable, and also absolutely miserable.

It really depends on how much traffic is present. I've ridden on roads in the
center of the right lane with speed limits ranging from 35 to 45 mph without
much of an issue. Drivers almost always change lanes to pass me or slow down
behind me before passing.

~~~
mauvehaus
> Unless the road has sufficient room for a bike lane of a minimum width of 5
> feet, then you end up with a lot of close passes from cars in the right lane
> and also end up riding in the door zone of parked cars to your right.

Thank you for clarifying. Yes, cyclists riding in a regular traffic lane
should absolutely take the center of the lane for all of the reasons you've
listed. Again, make people choose to hit you; don't let them do it by
accident.

------
crazygringo
> _In short, it treats the cycle as a car, but with access to less
> information._

This is just not even remotely true.

I cycle all the time in Manhattan and Brooklyn and for the same destination,
the car and cycling routes are _drastically_ different.

Cycling routes give tremendous preference for roads with actual cycling lanes,
and do their best to avoid main arteries to give you a safer side street
instead.

You can verify this yourself in Google Maps by turning on the "Bicycling"
layer to see the green-marked bicycle routes, picking random intersections to
get directions between, and observe how it tries to route you along bike
lanes. (Of course, Manhattan streets are tricky, so it's not the case 100% of
the time because giving too much preference to bike lines can result in a
_much_ longer trip.)

Quick searching also reveals that Google absolutely uses the elevation data to
try to route riders along flat roads, that uphill shows a longer estimated
time, and you can even see an elevation map of the route.

So as far as I can tell, this article is just 100% factually wrong, based on
an entirely false premise.

Is Google Maps _perfect_ for cyclists? Of course not (e.g. it has no idea
cobblestone streets are something to avoid), but it's not perfect for cars
either (thinks I ought to drive down a pedestrian staircase in LA).

But there's clear evidence that Google Maps "discovered" cyclists sometime
around 2014, if not before. It's been a while. (My biggest wish is for it to
integrate bike sharing into directions.)

~~~
wiredfool
It varies greatly, depending on the country.

Portugal doesn't have any cycling info. The routes in Spain and France tend to
go down things that are marginally identifiable as roads or cycling paths, and
more likely to be hiking paths. Definitely the sort of thing that I'd not take
a road bike down, but a MTB would be ok.

~~~
crazygringo
Yes. I wonder to what extent that has to do with countries/municipalities
_providing_ data though?

I know there are huge variances in the quality of government-provided data, as
well as whether governments provide them at all.

And that while Google Maps has Street View as a ground truth in some parts of
the world, it doesn't everywhere, and especially often where there are bike
paths that aren't next to a road for cars.

So without knowing more in any particular circumstance, the government may be
just as likely to blame as Google.

------
ken
You can always tell what features the creator of a product use themselves!

Microsoft long ago (10 years?) added a great feature for bus routes on Bing
Maps: "Previous stop is ___" / "If you reach ___, you've gone too far". That's
a brilliant idea, and it tells me that the people at Microsoft who built this
actually take the bus themselves.

It's pretty clear to me that everyone at Google drives.

~~~
dylan-m
That one was a great feature! I'm really hoping someone will figure out
landmarks for mapping directions at some point. Or has someone done that and I
haven't noticed? :) There's so much data about buildings now, it wouldn't be
that much of a stretch to say something like "head towards the Dominion
building", or "once you've passed the school on your right, you are almost
there". It would really help people who have trouble orienting themselves with
maps, it would help in places with less obvious street signs, and it would be
a hundred times more useful than that very cool and very unnecessary AR
navigation feature Google made because they needed to work around the broken
compasses in their phones.

------
Cockbrand
I'm amazed nobody has mentioned Komoot
[https://komoot.com/](https://komoot.com/) yet. They have an excellent route
planning tool for cycling, at least in Europe. I can't vouch for other areas
of the world, though.

~~~
tchvil
Strava just improved their mapping recently on the mobile. You draw with your
finger a shape, and in seconds(it is impressively fast) it gives you a route
to follow. Based on their heatmap probably.

I then still have to import it in Komoot before using it, to filter out
unwanted surfaces or way types.

I tried it for a few rides already and the route selection was great.

~~~
ronyfadel
I believe that feature only comes with paid Strava? When I try to activate
"Explore Routes", it asks me for 59.99€

~~~
tchvil
Yes, it is only for paying users

------
ronyfadel
For someone who has done his faire share of bicycle touring using Google Maps,
I can't count the number of times it has taken me to barren fields in the
countryside pushing my bike through mud. It even got me almost arrested once
in France, taking me riding on the shoulder of a 110km/h highway with no exit
in sight.

For anyone getting into touring, Komoot is much better for cyclists.

~~~
wott
> It even got me almost arrested once in France, taking me riding on the
> shoulder of a 110km/h highway with no exit in sight.

It is very possible it was legal, so you wouldn't have been arrested.

For example, I ended up on that road:
[https://www.google.fr/maps/@45.8894892,-0.9627792,3a,75y,325...](https://www.google.fr/maps/@45.8894892,-0.9627792,3a,75y,325.31h,90.66t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1sAwsGvZzoN2Kmed4_qF-8xw!2e0!7i16384!8i8192?hl=fr)

110 km/h speed limit, and yet not a single "motor vehicles only" sign
([https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panneau_d'indication_d'une_rou...](https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panneau_d'indication_d'une_route_%C3%A0_acc%C3%A8s_r%C3%A9glement%C3%A9_en_France))
on any of the entrances. Not even a "forbidden to cyclists" sign
([https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panneau_d'interdiction_d'acc%C...](https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panneau_d'interdiction_d'acc%C3%A8s_aux_cycles_en_France)).
Yep, that's crazy.

I actually didn't get "on" the road, I stopped before the insertion lane was
over, and cautiously walked back 200 or 300 m to the entry point (because of
course this part was one-way, and the last thing drivers expect is meeting a
cyclist there, in a forbidden direction, especially right when they prepare to
speed up to insert into highway traffic). I looked for the
warning/interdiction sign I had probably missed: there was no sign. And you
check any entrance on Streetview if you have time to lose, you won't find any.

Worst thing? I had to take that road anyway a bit later (farther), because it
is the only bridge around, and I was late. I had already taken that horrendous
bridge in the morning and I had sworn I would never take it again, but I had
no choice.

[https://www.google.fr/maps/@45.9202881,-0.9689672,3a,75y,140...](https://www.google.fr/maps/@45.9202881,-0.9689672,3a,75y,140.98h,93.98t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1sfDSbJtRka-
imbKTRwHDS2g!2e0!7i16384!8i8192?hl=fr)

See how narrow both the bike lane and the car lane are? And when I was there
it wasn't practically a car lane but a lorry lane. Speed limit is 70 km/h but
all of them overspeed. And anyway, the bridge is damn high, so you are (well,
I was) stuck at 15 km/h in your little painted lane with a wall lorries
passing 50 cm away 50 or 60 km/h faster. Of course, over this kind of bridge,
you may add some wind, possibly sideways, to fully enjoy your cohabitation.
And then you go down, still in your 70 cm wide lane, as it is as steep as when
you climbed, you reach 50 km/h, perhaps 60 km/h, and all of sudden, first you
meet a large hole in the road where the bridge deck articulates with the
ground part, and right after you jump over the hole, the bike lane turns right
and the only possible way to turn is to come to basically a full stop. Then
you stop for a while to calm down.

I think that's my worse cycling memory.

------
uoaei
Seriously. I have been waiting for a "public transit + bike" routing option
for a decade at least. You know, where public transit is an option but using a
bike to transfer between stations and destinations is preferable to driving or
walking. It appeared finally sometime this year, from what I noticed.

------
Phemist
Also, pleaassee allow us to set the language of the text-to-speech manually on
android without having to switch the lange of the whole OS. In the
Netherlands, you are no longer allowed to hold your phone in your hand or look
at it while riding a bike. Purely going by the English text-to-speech for
Dutch streetnames is very frustrating, whereas translating the whole OS to
Dutch just looks silly (UI concepts work much better in English).

See e.g. English:
[https://translate.google.com/#view=home&op=translate&sl=en&t...](https://translate.google.com/#view=home&op=translate&sl=en&tl=nl&text=Ingenieur%20Driessenstraat)

Or

[https://translate.google.com/#view=home&op=translate&sl=en&t...](https://translate.google.com/#view=home&op=translate&sl=en&tl=nl&text=Herderstasjepad)

(I guess these examples are only salient for Dutch speakers, but I'm 100% sure
that similar cases exist for all other languages, where people don't want to
switch the language of their whole OS just to hear streetnames spoken in a
non-....stupid way)

~~~
crazygringo
There are problems both ways.

For locals, having English pronunciation sounds absolutely ridiculous.

But for tourists, local pronunciation can be utterly unrecognizable. ("Rio
Tinto" becomes "Hee-oo Cheen-too".) The mangled English pronuniciation, at
least, is mangled to what a tourist can recognize/expect.

But I absolutely agree that a toggle would be a super-nice feature. As well as
phonetic hints when a road has a different pronunication from what you might
guess (especially in English).

~~~
Phemist
Yeah, I understand the problem. I feel like all these UI design decisions are
mostly due to a lack of recognition that language-use is not binary. Auto-
correct used to be absolutely unusable if you mixed typing in multiple
languages on your phone. Now that language toggling is easier it's only really
a problem when you mix languages in the same sentence, mixed-language models
do not seem to exist (yet?).

So yeah, tourists should not be forced to hear Dutch streetnames in Dutch,
just as I shouldnt have to change the language settings of my whole phone to
hear them in Dutch.

Several apps using OSM seem to handle the toggling just fine (e.g. Maps.Me),
and apparently the cycling experience is superior on OSM anyway. I used it
solely for the offline maps, but maybe I might start using it as my main maps
provider.

~~~
crazygringo
> _mixed-language models do not seem to exist (yet?)_

They have since 2016, at least on iOS. [1] I thought it would be a godsend...
but I ended up turning it off, because if I type 98% in language A and 2% in
language B, it changed words in language A to language B far more often than
made up for getting words in language B right.

[1] [https://www.cultofmac.com/441836/how-to-set-up-
multilingual-...](https://www.cultofmac.com/441836/how-to-set-up-multilingual-
typing-in-ios-10/)

------
eithed
Google Maps, from my experience, is unusable for cyclists - I don't know where
they're getting their data, but one instance that stands up to me till this
day is when it tried to get me on an express way, on a lane with opposite
traffic. Or, when it tries to get me to go through pathways that are looooong
overgrown. That's in London.

~~~
Aachen
Agreed, in Germany half the forest paths near me are missing. It isn't rocket
science, the crowdsourced OpenStreetMap data has them. (And Google would be
welcome to use the data for the price of adding credits, since it's open
data.)

------
fennecfoxen
Does Google do blue-sky software projects like this for the good of society
anymore? I've heard rumors they've gotten more focused, I've seen their
offerings shut down, and I am not sure this project would actually be
profitable for them.

And I say this as an avid cyclist.

~~~
tristanj
Google invests 10s of millions in their nonprofit google.org. They work on
some software projects. Google Arts & Culture also comes to mind, I don't
believe they make any money from it.

~~~
fennecfoxen
Do you think bike lanes are a good project for Google.org to sponsor? Is a
nonprofit-sponsored collaboration within an existing product like Google Maps
actually workable?

------
useful
I stopped using Google maps for turn by turn directions on my bike after every
unfinished road told me to make a right followed by an immediate uturn for 10
miles. Maybe they should buy Garmin. They have the best data set in the
fitness industry.

~~~
nradov
Google already placed their bet by buying Fitbit. There is zero chance they
will buy Garmin. But Garmin might be willing to license their cycling heat map
data for enough money.

------
nradov
As a frequent cyclist these are generally good suggestions. Google Maps is
helpful for planning bike routes, but the biggest problem I've found is that
it doesn't differentiate between surface types. Some of the routes it
recommends are really only usable on a mountain bike and not suitable for a
road bike with 23mm tires.

I prefer to use Garmin Connect most of the time because it does differentiate
between road bike versus mountain bike courses, and can do popularity based
routing for either type. But sometimes the routing algorithm goes crazy and
gives you routes that make no sense at all.

Strava data is available for license without acquiring the whole company.

------
wintermutestwin
Somewhat tangental: There used to be a website using google maps called
roadbiketoaster that allowed you to select sections of road and strung them
together as a route (instead of having to select points). It would then give
you an elevation profile, total distance and a cue sheet detailing each turn.
I think it went away due to some google API issue and I haven't found anything
that can do something similar. Does anyone know of a comparable solution
and/or what google changed about its API?

------
theomega
If you are searching a good offline bike navigation app for Android and iOS
check "Bike Citizens". Data is based on OSM. Works without internet
connection. You pay per city once. Focused on Europe and on cities, but
available around the world:

[https://www.bikecitizens.net/](https://www.bikecitizens.net/)

I'm not affiliated. Just a happy user.

------
INTPenis
Rule #1 of bicycletouring: Never trust a computer.

I have several paper cycling maps that I maintain (sometimes they need to be
updated) because one of my dearest hobbies is bycyclecamping.

I've let that computer betray me several times, no more.

I've used both Google maps and OSMAnd. One summer I tried using osmand offline
feature to download my entire route.

I still prefer paper maps, a compass and dead reckoning.

~~~
Aachen
How's that different from looking at a digital map and planning it yourself? I
personally trust navigation most of the way (I'll double check where it tries
to send me roughly, but I don't look at details), but I always check out the
destination and put the marker on a place where I see or expect parking to be
available instead of blindly going to the address. If you add waypoints on a
digital map instead of using paper, you can still have turn instructions, time
planning, distance measurements, etc. yet still plan how you like to drive.

Nothing against paper maps, just curious if there's a reason why that wouldn't
be best of both worlds.

~~~
Karrot_Kream
Directions for cyclists are just that much worse. On a long tour, unless you
spend the time looking into every intersection, you may end up for a couple
miles on a highway/expressway/avenue with cars going 40-60mph, and scaring the
crap out of you. This isn't an argument against digital maps of course (you
can still make a track and overlay that onto a map), but just wanted to add a
bit more context.

~~~
Aachen
Does that also happen in well known apps like OsmAnd or any of the
OpenStreetMap.org default routing engines in an area where the roads are
tagged correctly as car-only roads xor cyclepaths are available? Because that
sounds like a bug we can fix.

~~~
Karrot_Kream
The issue with OsmAnd and OSM.org in the US is often that roads are either not
tagged properly or they are tagged as cycle paths because the local government
has designated them as a cycling path, but the street itself is quite unsafe.
There's no real problem with the path routing libraries, a lot of it is just
the data.

I've thought about exploring an alternate set of tags to tag something in OSM
as a "popular" cycle path, but I'm not sure how to go about proposing that
tagging system.

------
jayd16
Google maps does give you elevation information. In the route selection
there's a drop down that shows an elevation graph.

------
hodgesrm
Google's support for cycling is very location-dependent. I used it to plan a
16 day trip from Berkeley to Crater Lake and back in 2015. It was invaluable.

From my point of view the best feature is that Google shows elevation gain,
which is a huge deal for a bike. I've checked this multiple times and it seems
quite accurate.

The worst feature is that some routes simply aren't shown. Google _will not_
show a bike route from Grants Pass Oregon to the coast going directly over the
Coast Range. The best route is over Bear Camp Road but Google no longer shows
it. People have died on that road--most famously in in 2006 but there have
been others. [1] The route it _does_ show is suicide for a bike. (Try Grants
Pass to Gold Beach to see this.)

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bear_Camp_Road](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bear_Camp_Road)

------
ruuda
Somewhat related, I find this channel about urban design and cycling
interesting: [https://m.youtube.com/channel/UC0intLFzLaudFG-
xAvUEO-A](https://m.youtube.com/channel/UC0intLFzLaudFG-xAvUEO-A)

------
crucialfelix
Google Maps recently added bike routing for Berlin. It chose a really fun
route through small streets and over walking bridges.

Before that it was awful. No I don't want to play 7 bridges of Königsberg, I
want to slip through the park and up the one way street.

------
difosfor
I usually pretend I'm walking when I use Google Maps in Amsterdam. Most of the
time that's the shortest route on a bike as well or close to it at least. No
hills and lots of bicycle paths here luckily :)

~~~
nikisweeting
I do this as well, I find the walking directions are usually the most direct
90% of the time for cycling.

------
grkvlt
> It doesn't appear to factor in aspects unique to cycling, for instance
> difference in elevation, when calculating the best route.

This quote is followed _immediately_ by a screen capture showing the text
'Mostly flat' underneath the journey time and distance.

In fact in Edinburgh, UK my experience with Google Maps has been that it
automatically selects routes that use more cycle paths, roads with cycle
lanes, and flatter or downhill options. Maybe this is different per city?

------
things
I get that cycling is complex to route but when I ask Google Maps for
directions to the city centre from my apartment, it sends me over a huge row
of stairs.

I notified them of the issue a couple of years ago and it got fixed a few
months later, but it came back again. At that point I gave up as I don't
really use the service for cycling anyway. I know my city well enough and when
I cycle outside of it, I use Strava.

------
yadco
I think most cyclists tend to ride closer to home, where they know all the
routes so wouldn't need Waze Vs going on long trips in a car where you don't
know the route and the road is more likely to be blocked of by an
accident/traffic (when did you last see a traffic jam of bike's?)

~~~
persilja
I don't know all potential routes in a 20 mile radius of my home, no. In a
large metropolitan area, there are literally many hundreds, if not thousands
of miles of roads within such a circle.

And something changes every year. Sure, someone who does nothing but ride, day
in, day out, like a bike equivalent of an old school taxi driver, would learn
them all after some time. I don't have that amount of time to spend.

I don't see traffic jams formed by bikes, no, but I regularly see construction
crews regularly closing bike lanes and bike paths for work, for parking their
construction equipment, or for setting up temporary signage.

------
cullenking
There are a couple other mentions on this thread of OpenStreetMap, but what
they don't mention is that half the value of google is in their mobile app.
There are a few mobile cycling apps, mine included, that solve this while
using OSM data for routing.

We use an open source routing engine called graphhopper. It's really good, the
team behind it is great, and I strongly recommended it out of all the major
routing systems. We tried them all, graphhopper is the most extensible,
fastest, and best managed project. Graphhopper takes OSM data and computes a
routeable graph based off one or more routing profiles you specify. There are
default profiles, but we have spent a considerable amount of time making our
own custom routing and weighting profiles to give the best directions for
cyclists, and are in the process of extending it further so that it takes into
account our database of about 50mm recorded bike rides by our users. The
result is that our cycling directions are pretty dang good at this point. We
hope to deploy the new popularity based routing stuff in the coming weeks.

We have both a web and mobile route planner that are worth checking out. The
mobile route planner is a paid feature, but allows free demos without saving.
The web route planner is free, though some of the more advanced bits (multi-
route editing, advanced libraries of routes, etc) are paid.

[https://ridewithgps.com](https://ridewithgps.com)

Finally, another mention in this thread of a quadlock - they are awesome. I
take my quadlock mountain biking and it has never budged. I'm not talking
gentle mountain biking, but big jumps and drops and high speeds. They are
super durable, the case is solid and is extremely protective of your phone.
They are worth the premium!

------
nedt
One big issue is Google ignoring good free data sources. In Vienna all cycle
lanes are available as ODG data. The license is very liberal, just mention the
source. Instead Google Maps shows old and wrong cycle lanes.

~~~
Aachen
What's ODG data?

------
sun_bear
Google Maps is useless for biking or hiking. Barely usable, perhaps, for road
cycling.

I have yet to find a better one than Mapy.cz. Great app, offline regional maps
and (subjectively) beautiful map aesthetics.

------
legohead
Google doesn't even know carpool lanes exist.

~~~
mjcohen
Sigalert does. Might be US only and only knows about freeways and big roads. I
use it (in Los Angeles) to check the freeways before I use Google Maps to get
my route.

------
tqi
Is it safe to be wearing headphones or looking at a bike mounted cell phone
while cycling?

~~~
bluntfang
I would say it's multiple orders of magnitude safer than doing it while
driving a car, if that's what you're getting at.

~~~
tqi
Interesting - I assumed it was safer for other people but less safe for the
driver/rider

------
xer0x
Seriously! This is even more valid for Apple maps.

------
downerending
As a pedestrian, I'd love an "avoid bicyclists" option.

------
kachnuv_ocasek
Even more surveillance capitalism, now even on my bike? No, thanks. I'd rather
see more community- or municipality-driven efforts with an ethical, open
approach to data and customers.

------
RocketSyntax
The title of this post is cynical. Make it opportunistic. It's an
entrepreneurial site.

------
dylan604
I recently started using my bike as 100% of my personal transportation. The
first time I went to my studio, I used GMaps to get me there. It took me
through some very unsafe parts of town even though the normal route would have
been so much safer. In this case, safer in the sense of getting jumped/mugged
vs traffic safety. I trusted it the first time just to see wtf it was doing.
Won't use it again, and went back to just using common sense.

~~~
xeromal
That's a difficult problem to solve without getting into hot water about
avoiding neighborhoods and appearing racist.

~~~
yadco
Can't they use the crime rates for each area?

~~~
xeromal
Yeah, they can, but I can just imagine the headlines. Google actively avoiding
compton. Is gOoGlE rAcIsT?

~~~
yadco
I suppose that depends on if they can say "we are using police data go ask the
police about this, we just want to keep our users safe" as well as how much
they care about such headlines .

