yeah, when it tried to do my commute it had me going on unpaved roads in a closed military facility. hahaha

If you just want higher quality aerial images, Microsoft's map often has high-resolution images in areas where Google Maps is lacking, particularly in the "Bird's Eye" view: https://www.bing.com/maps/

Yes, it does indeed. Thanks for that.

This could have been useful, last week.

is there a way to upload directions to garmin 705? Or i have to manually redraw them in garmin software?

That sounds like the best solution to me. Way too many variables to please everybody.

er, it sent me down a few major streets that I do not want ride on during rush hour.

Just use www.ridewithgps.com

Is there a way to have it show grade or am I just over looking it?

*EDIT*
Just found it!

wow this is awesome!!! someone already mapped out a ton of roads in my home town (see attached pic)

is there a legend any where? i can't seem to find one. and how would i go about marking certain roads like the ones on the attached pic???

Obviously we all know our own area and the roads we ride better than google, plus we all have different tolerances for riding on certain roads and in certain amounts of traffic. What this does bring to the table are the highlighted bike lanes and bike paths. That area could be improved however with different colors for bike paths, bike lanes, and bike routes...

still it's a start.

Sounds like it works for some, not for others - interesting. I'm just glad they got this out the door, after so much talk about it.

I believe this also brings the "Street View" for bike paths/MUPs, which is kinda cool.

Btw I'll eventually be plugging this new feature into https://veloroutes.org , but until then you can always click out a route using auto-routing and 'walking' directions mode. (also includes elevation profiles, something Google luckily does not do yet)

How do they figure average speed I wonder?

I only tried two routes so far (Northern Virginia) and it did OK. But you can tweak these routes the same way you can tweak riding routes by just grabbing and dragging the route line. It took me five seconds to adjust a route from a road that I know I don't like riding to some neighborhood roads including a small pedestrian-only causeway.

Washington Post article about this said that it gave routes directly through Arlington Cemetary where bikes are not allowed (oops). Makes me think that some of the Bike routes they give are likely based on the Walking routes. Hopefully with feedback from users this feature will get better over time.

It is a great start and will continue to bring to light that there are some of us out here that want to ride our bicycles. Having Google promote this a bit will help spread the word and hopefully make non-riders more aware that bicycling is not only a sport, but a travel option that deserves their attention (especially when they are driving).

For those of you worried about the time estimates, just do your own math to figure it out. This is a FREE service, not something you paid for that should be customized so it is perfect for you to double check the routes you always ride.

Mark

They do allow you to tweak the route if you don't like the default. However, I could not figure out how to save the modified route to my Google account to view it later or on my smartphone. Anyone know how to do that?

I agree with several posters on here: it's a good start but certainly needs a lot of work still. I mapped some of my common rides and it's got me riding on the 4 lane (2 each side) big state route by my house. No thanks.

Did you give them feedback on that issue? If you have time you should..

I've already sent several comments to Google. I hope everyone else who has issues with this program will do the same.

When you have your route set, click the [Link] button in the upper right. It will produce the full http link that includes all of your changes. You can then copy & paste this whereever you need.

hey it got one route right! it actually figured out using the bike trail!

https://maps.google.com/maps?f=d&sour...&z=11&lci=bike

That doesn't work because the Google Maps smartphone apps don't support the bicycle mode (yet) and most smartphones aren't powerful enough to run Google Maps in the web browser. Smartphones apps do allow you to display a map that is saved in your Google account, if you can figure out a way to save a bike route there.

yikes....use www.ridewithgps.com

After trying bikeroutetoaster, mapmyride, bikely, and a few others, ridewithgps is the best and seems to be the most accurate (at least comparable to what my 705 comes up with) for elevation data.

Doesn't work for Europe. That's what real maps are for.

You can correct all the bad choices it makes and help make it more accurate! On the left side you'll see:

Click the "here" and it'll pop up with a box to make changes/suggestions.