It's official, they finally did it. "Bicycling" is now an official Directions option in the drop-down on maps.google.com!

What's the best route from Seattle to NYC? Let Google tell ya.

https://maps.google.com/biking

Haven't really tested it out much - how does it work for you?

Are the routes it's giving you good?

Just tried it. Mileage wise, they give a shorter route.
But the choice of roads were HORRIBLE. They recommended the worst roads possible.
There needs to be alot of tweaking.
Roads w/ bike paths over roads w/o.
Roads w/ shoulders over roads w/o or narrow ones.
Roads w/ less traffic over roads w/ high traffic volume.
All 3 were sacrificed for lowest mileage.

Great service. Thanks for informing us.. I like their suggestions from Seattle to NYC.. We get to do a sea cruise across Lake Michigan en route.. a nice break after crossing the Rockies.. Anxious for some feed back to see if actual riders agree with their routing choices
ps.. I just used their bike maps function to confirm some of my favorite bike commutes. It appears to me that it works and in my case gave me the better option.

I don't think it works on Australian maps. It says it can't give directions when on bicycling mode Hopefully they update the world soon

I threw in a route that i use to ride from west south jersey to cape may and it picked almost exactly what I have pick out myself

There is a note on the side that the directions are in beta, and to report unsuitable roads, bike lanes that haven't been noted, etc. That being said, I just ran directions for my commute, and it completely ignored some streets with dedicated bike lanes and recommended a course that runs straight through a foot-traffic-heavy shopping strip...

thanks for the heads up! looks like this COULD be pretty cool. glad to hear they have a way to report bad roads as well as good roads/bicycle lanes

I tested my work commute. I got my route down to 13 miles and 50 minutes. Google bike maps got me 15.2 miles 1 hr 20 minutes. I guess it's a starting point that I can tweak.

I did a few quick routes in Indianapolis and Reno (lived there last year).

In Reno it's not very good. It doesn't seem to show that any streets have bike lanes. It seems to want to do anything to keep me off of McCarran, which actually has a bike lane all the way around the city. The "avoid highways" option seems more useful in Reno, where there aren't many MUP-type routes to use. Reno is a fairly small city, so maybe they didn't spend much time on it.

In Indianapolis it seems like they spent more time on the map. I take it that the green-dotted roads are roads they consider to be bike friendly? I disagree with some of their choices. Directions seem overly complicated. You get tons of turns when there are some decent streets that give you a much more simple route. Again, "avoid highways" and a little route dragging works better for me here. From what I can tell the only advantage to the "bike" option is that the Monon Trail and other MUPs can be included in your route.

So, if your city has lots of MUPs I think this could be a pretty neat deal. Personally, I'd prefer cities that had more bike lanes. In that case, just use "avoid highways" and drag your route a little when it takes you on an especially hairy road.

I don't mean to be too critical. I'm glad Google is trying and I'm sure they'll improve this thing over time. Nothing is going to replace getting out there on your bike and finding the best roads for yourself, so we shouldn't expect it to be perfect.

YES! Thanks a lot for posting this link.

Only works on the google.com map page, not the google.ca map page, even the .com version won't give bike directions in Canada.

Thanks for the link!

Just tried it to map a route to my sister's house (a ride I'm planning for sometime this summer). It didn't choose the route that I would select, but I don't know enough about the roads on her end of the state to know if these are better/worse/same as what I was planning.

I think I'll drop them a comment to see if they can add the ability to input your own estimated speed to calculate the expected ride duration...their calculation is showing almost 10 hours of ride time for a 106 mile route.

Pull down menu option exists, but no worky here either. Even the "walking" option is still beta in this country.

We do have an excellent journey planner for finding public transportation connections + walking/cycling routes in greater Helsinki area. In biking mode, it lets you choose between various priorities in routing (MUPs, surface type, distance), shows climb/descent profile and selectable "points of interests" (traffic lights, road construction sites, cafeterias, steep hills, bike park facilities etc). Routes are drawn either on map or aerial photo. Results can be downloaded in a couple of GPS readable formats. Etc. It's one of the better public service sites I've seen, and will continue to own Google in that geographical area due to the extensive public transportation info.

For specific destinations outside of journey planner's area, I still use Google with "driving" or "walking" options. Good thing I like maps (and have far too many of them), as the Google suggestion usually needs to be fine tuned with other sources to make it more suitable for biking.

--J

Just plugged my starting address and destination to see what it would suggest for my commute to work(which I did today), the route it picked was horrible, you would get killed riding on some of those roads, but I understand it's in beta. Still a starting point. Thanks for posting.

I just tried it for some routes and it picked some horrible roads, including some private and fire roads. There needs to be a choice between road bikes and mountain bikes I guess.

doesnt work for uk. walkng and cars still.

i'm not too fond of the google suggested directions after it gave me a route where i had to get off my bike, walk over someone's lawn, open a gate and then climb over a fence. the setting was for car. very nice.

WOW they severely underestimate my speed.

I'm actually in the opposite situation: It runs me through regular roads and a parking lot, adding perhaps a quarter or half mile, in a situation where I usually just pop a curb and follow a gravel trail for a more direct route. I reported it as a problem; we'll see if they adopt my suggestion.

I notice MUPs are shown in green. I think perhaps informal cut-throughs like my suggestion in the above situation might best be shown in yellow or something.... as in "This works for others, but is not part of an offical right-of-way or paved parking lot."

For one section of my commute it suggested a route I never would have considered but looks like it may be better than what I'm using now. My biggest concern is that I think it may go through a gated community (not sure if it's gated or not).

My guess is that they just plug in a standard 12 or 14 mph and leave it at that. Maybe if we report excessive travel times as "problems" they will get the idea and raise the average speed.... or maybe prompt for average cruising speed and adjust times based on that.

FYI, Google Maps typically overestimates traveling time for driving as well.

^It said Seattle to NYC was 3342 miles over 11 days. That's averaging over 300 miles per day.


I ain't that guy

I've been playing around with the site.. Could it be some areas works better than others. Where there is a well developed network of bike paths, it seems to choose them automatically. Google areas where roads are limited , it seemed to have a difficult time avoiding busy highways. Select states like say rural Michigan or Ohio, it found an interesting routing that would appeal to anyone with a sense of adventure.

I've been trying to Google a route from my home to my sister's about 50 miles away, and it wants to send me down either an unpaved utility access road, or down a restricted road that goes through Orlando International Airport. Other than those two obstacles, it pretty much picks the same route that I would.

Are there any other resources besides Google Maps to check the status of a particular road? It suggested one route that I find rather interesting, but the satellite images in that area of the state are old low quality and I can't tell if it's paved, dirt, restricted access, etc..

the walk option was already good enough.

Who is this tool targeted toward? If it picks roads that even road cyclists don't want to ride, what good is it for your a-few-rides-a-year recreational riders?