How well does google bike maps work?
 

I know its beta and all but what I have seen looks OK. Anyone else tried it?

Are you talking about when you select the bike option or is there a new Google maps just for biking that I'm not aware of?

Unless there is something different, the new Google maps has a very low limit on the number of waypoints you can have to develop a route. Far less than the classic version of maps. Better to use ridewithgps, strava, etc.

I played with out early on and tested it on my daily commute. I was pleasantly surprised when 2 out of 3 possibilities matched two of my normal routs almost exactly. The third was OK, but I never went that way because it wasn't as nice as other options.

A also tested other routes, and they were pretty good, though they missed a shortcut on a route that was impassible to cars, but OK for bikes because of a 50 yard pedestrian right of way connecting two roads.

They do accept used input and corrections and have always been responsive when I provided local inside knowledge. I'd like to believe they're still in Beta after all this time because they're waiting for more user info about local factor that they can't gather by driving around those google cars.

I still use Google, to get a sense of what they suggest, then apply my old fashioned map reading skills to get some sense of the lay of land. One thing I DON'T LIKE about google is that it's harder to get a sense of roads than it was on paper Rand Mcnally maps. However, they do have the advantage of street view which can resolve any doubts about what a road may be like.

A little hit and miss. From my home, one route was pretty much spot on to what I'd take to stay off heavily trafficked roads, while another routed me through a off-road hiking/mountain-biking park while showing solid green lines (i.e., paved). At least double check with a satellite view, if not street view.

It used to be a lot better but they had to "update" which usually means "make it worse" in Latin. Mind you it wasn't perfect and took me on some routes on a tour once that weren't really actually bikeable and wanted me to go to a campsite that had been abandoned for years but mostly was solid.

I use a GPS now and while I haven't had the chance to ride much out of terra firma, it has been way better. I need my turn by turn.

Agreed, and I'd encourage anyone who feels that the routing was misleading to provide the feedback needed to improve the data. I've found Google to be quite responsive to corrections that I've suggested and if we all enter such corrections in our local areas the overall quality of the maps and routing would be greatly improved.

Google will Get you Lost Big Time...

I've found good and bad:

Good - I like having elevation profiles and accumulated elevation.

Bad - Doesn't always distinguish between paved/unpaved roads and occasionally will go out of its way to ride a short section of trail.

Hence, what I tend to do for Google Maps is:
- Instead work with auto instructions but with the "avoid highways" flag set
- Once I have the rough auto instructions, then perhaps create a bicycle route with enough way-points to see the elevation totals.

I don't mind riding some non-paved roads, but I'd like to have much better indication that this choice has been made. Otherwise, I might prefer an 18-mile all-paved route over a scenic 15 mile route that is half-gravel road.

Wont tell you the history of the things you see along the way , will It?

Yeah, Is there something other than the "google.com/maps"? That works great for driving, not so great with the Bicycling routing option.

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Well, google map's bike option had gone from "pitiful" a year or two ago, to "mediocre" recently on some test directions I've tried. I wondered if they had improved it again lately.

So, on google maps, I routed "Cincinnati OH to Bethel OH", a town which is on a lot of local rides. To get there, it's a mix of city streets and country roads.

The Google Maps with the "bicycling" option selected originally routed on US50 to Rt 125, a terrible route. It's a busy highway most of the way, and there's a lot of better alternatives. Really, almost any side road would be better.
It's 29 miles, probably the most direct route.

I clicked the same starting and ending points in the Strava Route Builder, which uses a year of uploaded GPS ride recordings to route via popular biking roads.
It's 39 miles, and much better. (But, knowing the area, I'd go to New Richmond along the river, then inland, a small improvement over the Strava directions, in my opinion.)

Note: The Route Builder sometimes does pick unpaved roads, especially if those are about the only available road nearby. And some of the "popular" roads on Strava are steep hill climbs, that are popular for that reason!

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I reviewed the Strava Route Builder in this post.
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See the attached screen shots below for google and strava. I clicked the Global Heatmap option in the Settings on the Route Builder so I could see alternative routes. (Red are the most popular roads, blue somewhat less popular.) The selected route can be dragged to a different road to reroute.

The second half of the Google route is on Rt 125, which is a very faint blue in the Heat Map, indicating that cyclists avoid it. (I sure do!)

Google bike maps can put the thrill of the unexpected into touring. It tends to be pretty good in larger towns and cities with established bike lanes and routes. In small towns and places without a bicycle culture the algorithm seems to find routes that have low traffic streets and this can have you riding three blocks to the left or right for one or two blocks in the direction you trying to make good on to get out of town.

When I have toured on or paralleling freeways and other major highways Google is pretty good at showing frontage roads that many paper maps ignore.

I’ve followed Google for several miles to find the bridge crossing the Sacramento River was removed ten years earlier. It rerouted me through olive groves where I was serenaded by Tejano music blasting out of pickup truck stereos and the staccato sound of olive filling plastic tubs, a very enjoyable and unexpected turn near the end of that tour. The pavement can end without a Google warning. Riding out of Butte, Montana Google I was lead on a good chip and seal road that deteriorated to broken pavement and finally had me riding on loose dirt and rocks under I-5 in what amounted to a corrugated drain pipe. Local farmers assured me it was the correct way to go.

No route mapping system can be perfect. On the one hand, someone will complain about a barely passable segment. However, someone else will be annoyed that a "shortcut" wasn't shown.

This is no different than with paper maps, or even local info. When route planning, you have to draw on multiple sources, and cobble together a plan that suits you.

I suppose that over time google, and other mapping programs will accumulate more data, and provide more details about roads, such as type of pavement (or lack), condition, shoulders, etc. but no matter how good it gets we still have to accept that one person's great little shortcut is someone else's miserable stretch of bushwhack.

It's a tool, a very good tool. Use it, then tweak the route from there. I like the feature where cyclist can add features like cycling friendly roads, dedicated lanes, and such. No, it's far from perfect, you will never have a perfect system but it's pretty good.

+1 - My third tour was one from Cincinnati ---> Seattle a few years ago. Technically the Lebanon/Mason area where my then girlfriend was from. Anyway, leaving her house in Lebanon (Falcon Ridge Dr on the west side of US-42) it tried to route us onto Interstate 71 as we made our way to Loveland. Luckily she knew the area (born and raised) and got us there without getting onto the interstate.

Since then the maps have gotten better. Some issues this summer on my Portland2Portland run. Worst one was in Iowa where a bridge across the Mississippi River was missing and had to backtrack 18 miles through some nasty hills to cross the river into Illinois. Otherwise it routed me down some unpaved roads etc. Only had to turn around twice on this trip due to Google.

Thanks for the reviews.

Actually, my problem with google maps has nothing to do with the data accuracy. It's more about the process of route planning on a small screen that I still cant get used to.

With paper, I was working with about a square yard or so, which gave me both an overview and some detail at the same time, and it as fairly easy to short list options. Online, I can opt to zoom out to get the overview, but lose details in doing so. If I zoom in, I get great detail, but lose sense of the big picture.

I guess, I could learn and adapt, or find a place where I can access a wall sized screen, but I'm still preferring my old Rand McNally maps, for the early stages of blocking out routes.

BTW - since I was touring by bike before this modern technology, I got into he habit of only blocking out the vague outlines of my plan. I'd ride and navigate by whim, often using local info picked up along the way to tweak or change the plan entirely.

Google Maps is really bad where I live in the Colorado foothills. It will put you on technical single tracks all the time.

Yeah. It usefulness can be very area-specific. I used it planning a route out of Rapid City, SD. At one point it chose a road that turned into nothing more that a dirt track with a hump in the middle. Guess it got so bad the Street View car had to turn back.

Another thing it likes to do is route you our of the way in oder to take advantage of bike/recreation trails, even if they are short.

It's a decent starting place, but you really should investigate more deeply, especially out west. Case in point: Out of curiosity I asked for bike directions between two Montana towns on ACA's TransAm route. Google returned a route that used some remote, unpaved roads with no services. Great if you like that sort of thing and have the equipment to handle it. Not so much if you don't.

Another example you can try for yourself. Bike directions from Wise River, MT to Twin Bridges, MT ignores a perfectly good (and pretty) frontage road along I-15 between Divide and Melrose. The road between Melrose and Twin Bridges is 100% unpaved and is very rugged and hilly in places.

Wonderful advice from all!
I asked because I am planning a brief tour from my house in
Peoria Il to Baraboo Wi and the google dir seemed quite good for the parts I recognized. There were lots of trails used where available. I prefer roads for ease of peddling but the trails do give me lower stress.

Google Maps is really useful for locating bike trails. Pull down the map options icon, and pick Bicycling. They show as a dark green line, and if you zoom way in, the name of the trail is repeated along the green line.

Peoria to Baraboo
I did a quick strava route builder map, by just clicking the end points.
If I was riding this route, I'd usually click on intermediate stopping points to include, and adjust the route from there by dragging to different roads (or 'undo' to revert back). And spot check the route on google satellite view too.

The Route Builder probably works best with a GPS device, since they aren't afraid to have lots of turns! The Print button will produce a cue sheet that you can print.

Here's the strava route: peoria to baraboo

and a screen shot of the builder screen, showing that towns have a lot more bike activity, so they show as islands of red roads.

I use google bike maps in conjunction with paper maps. I will chart out the google route on a map sheet such as DeLorme gazateer and make adjustments as I see fit. As others, I have found that google does not distinguish between paved and unpaved roads. I have also found that it will throw you on a rail/ bike trail that may be planned but is has not been constructed. So you need other references so you can adjust on the fly. I have thought about GPS as well, but haven't pulled the trigger on that yet- may be just another device to keep powered up.

happily surprised it utilizes unpaved rail trails, with some minor exceptions. a bonus is being able to use street view to view road crossings. for commuting, the street view is very helpful to view intersections & signage & being able to move the blue line to achieve the shortest commute distance, is very helpful

And to show you how hard route mapping can be for a machine serving lots of people? Your "bads" are "don't care" (gravel v road) or "good" (cycle paths) to me. I think cycle routing is MUCH harder than routing for cars, where people generally only care about shortest distance or shortest time. Personal preferences are much different in a cycle route than easily computable facts.

As to Google bike routes, I find it very hit or miss. Always best to double check its math instead of just blindly trusting it. Just another tool in the box.

In parts of Western Mass, Google Bikes takes you on some truly gnarly trails. ATV tracks, swamps, dried up riverbeds, the works. For many this would not have made for a nice ride... for me, it was exactly what I was looking for.

https://maxthecyclist.files.wordpres...5/max_7362.jpg

Lots more pictures from this ride on my site: 100 Miles of Dirt

For general route planning, I wouldn't use Google maps. Ride with GPS does a better job. But for day-to-day riding, Google maps is where I turn to. I usually pick a destination (campground or other accommodation) and plot the route between those points. I don't, however, follow the route blindly, however. If Google sends me off on a 30mile detour to a perfectly good route, I won't take the route.

I found this to be the case a number of times along the Delaware River. The road that parallels the river on the Pennsylvania/New Jersey border is a nice road that has low traffic and is perfect for riding. Google kept trying to send me off into the hills of Pennsylvania to get me off the "Federal Road". I didn't take their route.

This can occur with paper maps as well, especially those provided by Adventure Cycle. The folks at Adventure Cycle sometimes go out of their way to avoid towns and, especially, cities. The section of the Trans American Trail in eastern Colorado is a prime example. The route takes you through Eads, Sugar City, Ordway and Boone. They have to go through Pueblo (a largish city for them) because there's no way around it. However, all of those towns (with the exception of Pueblo) are, essentially, nonexistent and have limited services. A better route with more services (and a few tourist attractions) is US50 through Lamar (sizable town), La Junta (larger town) and Fowler (small town but still has more to offer than Ordway:rolleyes:) US50 has a bit more traffic but at least you don't have 40 miles of nothin' between the towns (Eads to Sugar City is damned desolate and neither is anything to write home about).

Another example (they seem to have changed their maps since 2003) is around Smithville, MO. They used to take you on a huge detour around a reservoir that is 20 miles out of the way when you could just do a 5 mile ride south of the reservoir to reach the same spot. When I did the route, I just didn't follow their guide as I would do now with Google.

Sometimes it's just better to use your own brain than to follow something blindly:thumb: