Way to "mapquest" bike routes?
 

Is there a way to get driving directions that are bike-friendly? Or at least avoid highways? Every single one I've tried puts me on a highway and I want to know what streets I would take. Or do I have to whip out an actual paper map? :P

Thanks a lot :)

They used to have the option to avoid highways, but it's not there anymore. I don't know why they took it off.

I'd be willing to bet that a site that listed 'non-car' routes or stuck mainly to bike friendly roads would end up getting a lot of hits...

Check out Map24. Pretty cool.

Ah man, sweet! Being a bit of a GIS geek, that is way too cool! It provided a (slightly funky) route between my two test locations, but it worked fairly well at avoiding highways... And, it's a neat alternative to MapQuest...which has been getting worse instead of better (the loss of the "avoid highways" feature is one example). I think I have a new fav!

It's an improvement over mapquest, but still, getting a mapping CD is better. You avoid the damn ads, and it's faster, and the maps are more detailed.

www.mapsonus.com has an "avoid major hiways" option.

Dan

If you live in the LA area, go to www.bikemetro.com

Mapquest used to provide longitude and lattitude coordinations. I really don't need these but for those who have a GPS with no map software, it could really come in handly. Does anyone know if Mapquest has a premium service or any online service that gives longitude and lattitude coordinates?

Get a used copy of Microsoft Streets and Trips. It has an option where you can set the maximum speed of travel to 5 mph!

I use Mappoint, which despite being run by Microsoft is pretty decent. It doesn't have the "avoid highways" option, but you can choose "quickest route" or "shortest route", and the latter generally avoids most highways.

I've been toying with the idea of writing a bike-focused map site. Route-finding is not a terribly difficult problem, and the basic data is freely available. The tricky part would be identifying "bike-friendly" roads.

err... Beware of Mapppoint. Many of the maps have errors on one layer (like when you zoom) and not on another. I've found that parks and some streets tend to be incorrectly named or old.

I can confirm that. MapPoint got me lost in a town I didn't know so well by incorrectly labelling a road on the wrong side of the highway from where I wanted to go. I'll never trust it again for important travelling.

MS Streets and Trips however is much, much better. I easily navigated towns and highways in OR and WA with S&T data downloaded to my PDA. I think the only time the paper map came out was when planning large distances and the PDA screen was

Hmm, I'll keep that in mind. I have noticed that things like subway stations appear and disappear at random as I zoom in/out. Other than that I haven't had much trouble, except that it can't locate the address of my office :)

I use Delorme TopoUSA extensively for route planning. Having topographic data to use for route planning is a great tool. You can customize the routing tool to favor or avoid various types of roads and set your own waypoiints mid-route if you want to force the software to use certain roads in a route.

Will this Delorme TopoUSA create printed maps that are UTF compliant? In other words, will it create maps that have longititude and lattitude lines across the screne?

wow...that site is pretty good, you can even have it print a small map for every turn.

I usually use maps.yahoo.com and i just map my starting point, then just look at the map to find roads that'll get me to the right place.

For those in Minnesota,

I was given a set of maps for Minnesota that indicates the traffic volume (low, medium, high, heavy) and the existence of shoulders.

The maps I have were produced in 2001 and for additional copies:
Minnesota's bookstore
117 University Avenue
St. Paul, MN 55155
(651) 297-3000

I found this one for arizona. It was too big to post. Just scroll down and look for "Arizona Bicycle Routes Map". Boy, these would be quite a resource if we could find many states...

http://www.mapathon.com/az.html

Hey guys... thanks for the pointers... MapsOnUs works pretty well... Map24 was cool but even with the no-highways thing on it put me on a highway.

But I have to admit that website bikemetro.com is awesome.... I happen to live in the LA area... this thing even gives you an elevation distribution along your ride and lets you pick out a route which doesn't have as many hills and will even calculate for you how many calories the average commuter would burn taking that route. I'm very impressed :) Looks like I'll be climbing 348 feet over a 9 mile stretch every day commuting back home.. yikes :)

Yes, you can turn a lat/lon grid on or off as you wish.

A friend of mine uses MapPoint to map some of our Saturday rides. We've run into a couple of issues, new roads not shown and some unpaved roads. Here is a link to a page of some Tucson routes: http://psy1.psych.arizona.edu/cgi-bin/megahurtz

wmButler---

Thanks for that link. I don't ride road much (other than a 20 miles rt commute), but some of those rides look pretty good!

PS: I did do Mt Lemmon once, pulling a trailer all the way to the very top to camp that night. It was a long day. :D

Neither worked well for me in CO.


Mapsonus gave less detail, even with "more detail" selected.
Map24 gave more detail, but still didn't show parks, etc. However it did allow setting mph to 10-15 mph range to give you a ball park os commute times.

Both failed to show bikeway underpass under highway and to show the parks in industrial park. One of the parks is terminus of bikeway underpass.

Huff

Also, before I got a cycle computer, I used mapsonus.com to get approximate distances for a route I already rode. All you have to do is enter enough intermediate destinations to force application to map the route you ride.

Mapsonus doesnt do Canada