Google Maps Goes Biking
written: March 14, 2010Google Maps has added biking trails to their map layer and even allows you to get directions specifically for your bike. That’s pretty awesome! The official announcement is here .
I have to say that I am very impressed with that Google has done with their awesome mapping website ever since they left TelaAtlas!
Google makes notes of there distinct paths that were added on their bike layer. They are:
- Dark green indicates a dedicated bike-only trail
- Light green indicates a dedicated bike lane along a road
- Dashed green indicates roads that are designated as preferred for bicycling, but without dedicated lanes
It was fun taking a look at how this works around my hometown of Hartford. As you can see in the below picture, Hartford has two of the new layers present, the light green and dashed green paths.
Google notes that it got most of the information for this layer from Rails-to-Trails. Go here to try this feature out yourself. I wonder if this information is able to be used through their API? I will have to look into that more.
