Google "Bike-There" is live!!

{Update} Please see Bikeportland.org as well as Streetsblog for more in-depth interviews with some of the folks at Google behind the launch.

This is a day I have been waiting for, at least about 2 years since I first heard murmurs of the petition for the feature. The launch of the Bike-There feature as a layer on Google maps(zoom in to any part of the country to see the included trails).

For many people it may not seem like a big deal but if you are in New York or any of the other specific cities with a complete setup, and want to get on a bike but only want to go on say, separated routes, now you can find a way!

This opens the options for so many things, combining safe rides with transit links, and this feature combined with bike parking might be the next step.
If you know where you are going has bike racks outside, you see there is a separated path the entire way, then maybe you will replace that car trip with a bike, and that’s the step that’s most important

so lots of folks covering this, but I got the first hint this morning from my Ecology professor and then Ecovelo put the post on their Facebook feed.

Read the blog that has been pushing for this option for years and who is behind the large petition to get this program across the country, Here

googlemapsbikethere.org
ecovelo link
google maps link to nyc with bike layer on

Google Bike There

To get back on track a little, its been really busy of late with midterms and then vacation in DC and Jim has had work out of town so has been very busy, but I now have a backlog of stuff to post on on will be getting with the program soon. This post though is one that we first heard a rumour on a good while back when the google street view trike first appeared. the idea of a google bike there function.

The best part about this new dataset is that we've been able to add a lot of new, detailed information to Google Maps - information that helps people better explore and get around the real world. For example, college students will be pleased to see maps of many campuses; and cyclists will now find many more trails and paths to explore. Soon we even plan on providing you with biking directions to take advantage of this new data. Of course, in the true Google spirit of "launch and iterate," we plan to work with more data sources to add new features in the map.

Well that’s the quote from the Google Latlong blog about their latest update to the system and base map interface adding a lot more data. So for now I will leave it at that and you can hop over to their blog to find out more of exactly what type of changes they have made. Look for a usual Friday infrastructure post tomorrow and setting up for a slew of posts from this weekend. Thanks to Infrastructurist for the heads up, and the googlemapsbikethere.org website.
Thanks for reading and check back soon!
-John