Google Maps adds bike trails in 150 cities

<p>Bicycling from Point A to Point B can now be Googled, a new part of the Internet giant's mapping service unveiled Wednesday that looks for bike paths, bike lanes and bike-friendly routes in giving directions.</p><p>“It opens up an entirely new transportation world for people who want to bicycle,” said Jennifer Kelaba of Rails-to-Trails Conservancy in Washington, D.C. “They route you in ways that are best for bicycle transportation.”</p><p>The new service was unveiled at the National Bike Summit in Washington, D.C. Wednesday.</p><p>It is an additional layer to the popular Internet service that Google provides motorists, who can enter a starting point and a destination to receive a map and directions.</p><p>Google has added a drop-down box to select bicycles instead of cars.</p><p>“It's for the person who wants to commute to work or to go to the store,” said Elaine Filadelfo, a Google mapping spokeswoman. “For someone who wants recreation, you want to take your family for a ride, you can flip on the button and see where there are bike trails.”</p><p>It's also a service bicyclists have been clamoring for, said Christine Culver, executive director of the Sonoma County Bicycling Coalition.</p><p>“It will help grandly,” Culver said. “They have done a really good job of marking what the routes are, if it's a bike path or a bike lane or route that is frequently used by bicyclists. It will be a tool for people to use to figure out the best way to get to school or work.”</p><p>Google warns the service is still in its development stage and is depending on its users for feedback.</p><p>“It is in beta, it is a very new feature, it will not be 100 percent perfect and it will get better over time,” Filadelfo said.</p><p>Google directs bicyclists over the Joe Rodota Trail from Santa Rosa to Sebastopol and west Sonoma County, and the Joe Rodota Trail from Sebastopol to Forestville.</p><p>Both were projects of Rails-to-Trails, which helps develop abandoned railroad right-of-ways into bike and pedestrian paths. It gave Google its database of 1,600 bike paths that cover 19,000 miles and another 11,000 miles of other bicycle trails.</p><p>The Google mapping service, however, doesn't yet know that Humboldt Street in Santa Rosa has been designated as a bicycle boulevard and a preferred bicycle route, telling riders instead to use busy Mendocino Avenue.</p><p>“It will be a good thing long-term, but it will have a few bugs to work out,” said Frank Ammirota, manager of The Bike Peddler in Santa Rosa. “It needs the input from people who ride every day and all over town. They will tell you where the good routes are.”</p><p>Gordon Stewart of Sebastopol, a Santa Rosa Cycling Club director, said Google recommends some Sonoma County roads that may cross farms or no longer exist.</p><p>“It gives a map that is bright and lively and gives a good idea of where the road goes,” Stewart said. “But it should not be treated as a hard and fast way to get from point to point.”</p><p>Google includes a place on the website for users to submit suggestions and corrections.</p><p>“Now that it is live, they can use a button to report problems, they can give us local feedback as well,” Filadelfo said. “‘A recommended road you shouldn't include is Pine Street,' or ‘you suggest that I take Elm but it is too busy.' People on the ground who ride the routes will know best.”</p><p>Customers at the Bike Peddler in Santa Rosa on Wednesday said they see the value.</p><p>“I'm just a casual rider. I ride on the flats, to go to the grocery store, but I would use it, especially going into uncharted territory,” said Dustin Zuckerman of Santa Rosa.</p><p>Gabrielle Letourneau of Santa Rosa wants to find a safe place to take her son, Dominic, who is 10 months old, for a ride.</p><p>“I want to find paths that would be safe, what is safe for children, now we just go where we already know, the parks, things like that,” Letourneau said.</p><p>The service has been under development for two years by Google's mapping engineers in Seattle, but it has been in the past six months that new technology has made it feasible, Filadelfo said.</p><p>“It was an interesting project for the engineering team, it works differently than calculating for the algorithm for driving,” Filadelfo said. “What are the efficiencies, the trade-offs to route someone out of the way to avoid a hill. It's a human-friendly algorithm.”</p>