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Google maps adding bike routes to its navigation settings
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After over a year of lobbying, Google is finally heeding bike activists' pleas to add biking directions to its navigation settings. In addition to listening to feedback from cyclists around the country, Google will also begin adding many trails and off-road paths to its maps. To gather "street view" footage of the growing database of off-road paths, Google has built a special tricycle to tow the cameras through bike paths and fire roads.
Google is reaching out to users as well as municipal transportation and surveyors' organizations to expand their database. Tech-savvy cyclists can supply Google with their own GPS files, or help them refine existing routes by reporting glitches and route updates. Local organizations with "authoritative vector data" are also encouraged to lend their knowledge to Google. Old-school cyclists who are stuck in the pre-GPS stone age can also do their part to help Google decide which paths get priority for photo sessions with the Google Trike by voting on the US Street View Special Collections poll.
Google has not announced when they plan for the new navigation feature to be launched, but once the application is up and running they estimate that it will take about a month for new routes to be added to their database. To learn more about how to submit data to Google, check out the non-profit Google Maps Bike There homepage. To learn how to suggest improvements to existing maps, visit Google's Lat Long Blog. Finally, to vote on where the Google trike should make its first rounds (one of the nominees is Faneuil Hall), vote on the Google poll.
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