bikelif3

I've been using google maps since the beginning. For a while now I've been using it to plot bike routes. Normally I would use the "directions" feature to plot out a route and it would calculate distance. This can be tedious if you only want a ballpark estimate of distance.

Recently I realized that you can right click on the map and select "measure distance" and then click another point on the map, right click and select "distance to here", and repeat this to quickly get an estimate of a bike route.

I personally have been using google maps for a while and did not know this was a feature, thus this post.

Btw, satellite view seems to be the best view when creating bike routes. Sometimes I select "travel by car" and sometimes "travel by bike".

skidder

If you use the 'travel by bike' feature you can also put the pointer over a spot on the highlighted route and drag it over to a different street to change a section of the route. Google has given me some crazy routes that I'd never use why on a bicycle, but I was able to do this and get a better route. If using the 'Measure Distance' tool you can do something similar. You can click on your starting point to get started, then 'jump' from point to point on a curvy route until you get to your endpoint and it'll give you an accurate measurement for both the whole route and sections of the route along the way.

cellery

I used to do it this way with google earth. Feels really old school to me these days - big time suck.

When I discovered wilderness backpacking I also discovered Caltopo dot com

Draw line > use OSM Follow

Thank me later. But be careful in urban environments. I can create a weeklong wilderness backpacking route in the middle of nowhere in about 15 minutes that is accurate to GPS level accuracy with thousands of track points per line. I create cycling routes the same way. It's the most accurate thing there is on the entire web. For cycling routes, it's even better than wilderness trails, because roads and urban trails are already mapped to a high degree of accuracy and don't change seasonally like wilderness trails do. You can import it into Google earth with a KMZ. Or onto a Garmin device or Phone a GPX or GeoJSON, etc. I pay the $50/year for their offline map - it's how I do most of my wilderness navigation now, as do many wilderness travelers.

The distance measure tool and elevation profile tools have the same options to follow OSM data. Again, be careful in urban environments where the sheer density of OSM vector lines can sometimes crash a browser tab instance. In those environs, you want to use a deep zoom level, which seems to help not load so much OSM data at once.

bikelif3

I use this but sometimes it just doesn't work for some reason.

Oh ok, you can just keep left clicking to progress the route measurement, gotcha.

You had my attention until this...

Troul 

https://www.sherpa-map.com/ might be of helpful use.

fishboat

With regard to "measure distance" (a feature that has been in google maps for a decade or more)

...Something a research chemist told me when I started my career years ago, "..just because it's new to you, doesn't make it new" ..a few words that stuck with me over the last 30+ years.

Jughed

I use Gravelmaps.com.

You can plot any route by picking points and it will give you distance, elevation gain/loss, grades. Both road and gravel.

JohnDThompson 

Google pedometer can handle the arithmatic for you:
https://gmap-pedometer.com/

GamblerGORD53

Twice I asked it for a bike route from Sacramento to Salt lake city. It gave me the 1852 Pony Express Wagon Trail. WTF.
Many people have DIED following idiot Google suggestions.

Troul 

there's a few "suggested" routes that i wouldn't drive let alone ride on.

cellery

If you want to take what I said out of context and leave an amazing free tool on the table then it's your opportunity to miss out on.

google cycling directions have been known to get cyclists killed. So I offered a free alternative that places the onus on the cyclist to take responsibility for their route finding.

Notice using the context in which I described why I pay for what is otherwise a free piece of software.

bikelif3

My bad, I guess I was skim reading a little too fast....

KerryIrons

Have had similar experience with Google Maps. I suggest using RideWithGPS. You can pick several different layers of maps and it is much more cycling oriented. The free subscription is all I have ever needed and I've done a huge number of maps all over the US.

rumrunn6

google maps have been very useful planning my commutes to work. it's great to move the blue line to reduce the total distance

street view is also helpful to me when researching off road trails when I want to see what the trail looks like from a street that's been photo'd. this example is a paved trail but kinda shows what I mean

bikelif3

Another thing that might not seem obvious. Once you get a route just like you want it, copy the url from the browser and paste it into a notepad file along with route distance. When you want to view the route again, just paste the link into google maps.

I have all my routes in one notepad file with mileage. Occasionally the copied url won't be the same when you paste it back to google maps, but it doesn't happen often.

cellery

It's really my bad as I was not as clear as I could have been that the features you'd need for measuring distances and creating routes are free. Also I may have mistakenly said per month but it's $50 per year so it's quite cheap. The paid features are mostly for backcountry exploration in the field. I actually think most who use it don't even know that there's a paid option, they don't try to sell it or push it in your face. I pay to get wildfire data, live satellite layers and offline mapping on the phone app for wilderness navigation where there's no cell service.

mpetry912 

bikelif3 thanks this is a very good trick, used it today !

/markp