Google's bike maps "filled with potentially fatal flaws"

Google's bike maps are "filled with potentially fatal flaws, including routes that cut across Central Park's treacherous transverse roads and steer cyclists through truck-riddled thoroughfares." New York Post, Information Week.

Boing Boing editor/partner and tech culture journalist Xeni Jardin hosts and produces Boing Boing's in-flight TV channel on Virgin America airlines (#10 on the dial), and writes about living with breast cancer. Diagnosed in 2011. @xeni on Twitter. email: xeni@boingboing.net.

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solitaire

I can see Google producing a GPS/accelerometer blob and asking regular cyclists to volunteer their privacy to improve their routes.
- The Life Of Bryan
  
  Actually, many/most of the highest mileage cyclists already use GPS recording devices. I’ve got three years worth of GPX files that would answer many questions about how to get around this town by bike (as well as where to get farm fresh eggs or good pot).
VagabondAstronomer

For the local routes (if you can call them that; I’d like to think of them as “roads to adventure/sheer terror”), Google Maps has been remarkably close. Of course, there are so few of them locally that should really be considered safe…
Anonymous

More detailed coverage of the hasidim v. bicyclist dust-up at the Awl.
andygates

#7′s right, every lane is a bike lane. (This is a challenge to bike routing: personal preference scores much higher than it does in car routes – I like it flat and fast, many riders like it twiddly and quiet)

#19′s right, OSM’s bike lane stuff kicks ass. Try maps.cloudmade.com for good OSM bike routing.

I have to wonder… where did Google get the bike dataset from? Any ideas?
Anonymous

I bet none of the referred newspapers or people bitching about it have bothered to report the route error to google using the report link included in the disclaimer.

“Bicycling directions are in beta.
Use caution and please report unmapped bike routes, streets that aren’t suited for cycling, and other problems here.” (link)
Drang

Even in the sedate suburbs, following Google’s biking directions too closely will get you killed. But I’ll bet they’ll be very good a year from now.
Anonymous

i tried their walking directions ages ago and it directed me to walk through a street that had no sidewalks and specifically said no pedestrains.

if they can’t fix their walking maps they shouldn’t have even tried the bike ones.
Anonymous

There are a lot of these articles out, and I guess to a certain extent they’re deserved, but really this just underscores how difficult a problem bike pathing is. Google is not having trouble doing anything that I haven’t struggled with doing by hand using a combination of local bike maps and Google maps previously. At least now Google recognizes the ability to go places where cars can not.
Anonymous

read this — http://bikesnobnyc.blogspot.com/2010/03/right-of-way-watching-where-youre-going.html
Teresa Nielsen Hayden

If you want NYC cycling maps, go to the Transportation Alternatives site.
Anonymous

Bah…I’m perfectly willing to bike down the interstate.

The only feature I want from google maps bike is to get me to where I need to go the fastest I possibly can via both bike trails and roads.

Don’t try to protect me from myself.
Anonymous

Bullshit. Every lane is a bike lane.
jasoncardillo

As BikeSnobNYC points out, just like the driving directions, providing information doesn’t mean you get to turn off your brain. If you get there and it looks sketchy, and you ride the route anyway, it’s your own bloody fault.
- Teresa Nielsen Hayden
  
  Then BikeSnobNYC is a posturing idiot. You don’t last five minutes on a bicycle in NYC if you’ve got your brain switched off, no matter how you work out your routes.
  - Shlepzig
    
    You failed to read the post before venting.
    
    BikeSnobNYC said pretty much exactly what you just did:
    
    “You can share information, but you can’t outsource common sense, and one would hope that if a popular search engine tells you to ride your bike down a street that turns out to be closed for construction, or along a path next to which stands a sign saying “Pedestrians Only,” or through a lake of fire, that you would have the presence of mind not to ride your bike through the construction site, or onto the pedestrian path, or through the infernal loch.”
    
    from
    http://bikesnobnyc.blogspot.com/2010/03/right-of-way-watching-where-youre-going.html
    
    -Shlep
Alex Barclay

Not just killed. Probably arrested and sent to Gitmo!

I was planning my route from Delta, BC to Pt Roberts (Good ole USA) last weekend and they directed me to just “hop” over the border, rather than going through the actual border crossing.
Anonymous

google maps has a nonexistant street passing directly through my house.
sarliaee

The people at the New York Post are fools. Bad maps don’t create traffic hazards. Treacherous tranverse roads, truck-riddled thoroughfares and holding up motorists are all just part of daily life for a bike commuter.
No map is going to be perfect, it took too long for google for create bike maps but at least they’re here now.
Commuting by bike is and always be best the best way to get to know a city intimately, knowing which routes are fastest and safest are just second nature to a weathered bike commuter. I doubt the maps will ever be that useful, conditions constantly change, from an annual to a weekly to a second by second basis. You never know when, all of a sudden you’re going to be thrust in to traffic between two trucks. Having a correctly routed map is going to prevent this.
- sarliaee
  
  Having a correctly routed map ISN’T going to prevent this
Jon Adair

The route it suggested for me cuts through Tampa International Airport, right across the taxiways.
- dculberson
  
  SWEET!!! You should totally print that out, follow the directions, and use it as a defense when the cops come after you. It would be worth it to get to ride amongst the airplanes.
CrackWilding

It weirdly tells me to take a busy highway from my house to Stone Mountain, GA, even though there’s a bike trail that parallels the highway for the whole distance.
tstockma

I just moved to a new part of Denver, and Google bike maps aren’t helping me here…someday maybe, but I have no need to click on this link for another year or two.
widnoon

I tried it today and it gave me a better route than the one I was planning on taking.
Anonymous

Google Bike maps is a huge fail for fixie riders.
Where are all the stops for PBR and Plastic Camera photo opportunities?
Moriarty

The hoverbike mapping is all straight lines.
maxoid

did they miss that you can submit these errors to the project’s team, and they will be taken into account? it ain’t ever gonna be perfect, but it can’t get better if nobody makes a helpful effort.
Zadaz

So what was the excuse for all the hazardous, dangerous, and downright stupid cycling I saw before the Google maps?

Oh, right.

Sometimes I think things get posted to BoingBoing not because it’s something work knowing but because it lets us post “Morons!!” comments like this one.
PrettyBoyTim

To be honest one of the problems is that different cyclists have very different needs. If you’re an experienced rider looking to get somewhere quickly you’ll want a very different route than if you’re someone wanting a quiet ride somewhere with your children.
Anonymous

Everything Google does still needs a lot of work but then it reaches that point where it is really great and the still keep improving it. Same thing with Apple. I’ve just learned to avoid the first version of anything they produce–the second time around it’s usually pretty darn good. They seem to create things they want to use themselves.
Anonymous

“Truck riddled thoroughfares”?

Just remember who delivered that bike in the first place. They don’t magically appear in your favorite bike shops by magic you know.
Anonymous

OpenCycleMap.org, from OpenStreetMap.org, is licensed under a CC-By-SA license, so join and add to it instead of counting on Google.
Not a Doktor

I wish I had a workable bike. And workable knees.
solitaire

“Even in 2010, sometimes you’ve still got to think.” – BikeSnobNYC
jonathan_v

as I posted on the last announcement…

http://ridethecity.com

they’ve been doing this for a few years, and are actually safe.
- Nash Rambler
  
  As someone else said above, that only covers Chicago, Austin and New York City.
dragonfrog

This paragraph blew me away:

In Brooklyn, Google steers cyclists into the path of anti-bike Hasidic Jews by designating Bedford Avenue between Division and Flushing avenues in Williamsburg as a legitimate bike route. The city sandblasted away that street’s bike lane last year after protests.

What the what? In 2010 AD, in a city that’s supposed to be the shining beacon of modernity, first-worldliness, inclusiveness, it is possible to take a wrong turn on a bicycle ride and end up pursued by a mob of torch-wielding religionists outraged that you are using a devil-machine in their neighbourhood?

Please, if anyone know more about this, tell me – I don’t know what to make of it.
- Tdawwg
  
  The Hasidic community went and talked to local government about their concerns: citizen democracy in action, however motivated by anti-democratic religious concerns. Their main objection was the copious amounts of female flesh awheel through their neighborhoods. As everywhere in Williamsburg, irony abounds.
  
  One can still safely cycle down Bedford Avenue, all the way up “Hasid Hill” to the tonier, hipper parts of Williamsburg. One is more likely to be sneered at by trackstanding fixie-riders than to be run over by minivan-driving Hasids. The worst I’ve ever gotten has been aggressive driving and beeping, and some stares from their private security folks, and I’m a notoriously aggressive, stop-sign-ignoring, etc. cyclist. Really, it’s fine: no torches, no mobs.
  - dragonfrog
    
    Thanks Tdawwg – that make some sense. So, if I get what you’re saying, the problem is really just that the map is showing a bike lane that has actually been removed, not that the residents of the neighbourhood don’t like bikes.
    
    Because I was totally picturing some sort of West Side Story scene, but with finger-snapping Hasidic Jews with switchblades, facing off against cyclists in skinny jeans swinging bike locks with casual menace…
    - Tdawwg
      
      O, no, that would be so much cooler and more performative than the admittedly kind-of-cool and quite performative crapfest that currently obtains there. Just some fingerwagging and beardpulling, from what I’ve seen.
      
      The community there does indeed seem to loathe bicycles, but it hasn’t deteriorated to the point of a Hasid jihad yet. Nor have the hipsters reciprocated with an all-out arts-festival freakout, as was promised by a naked bike ride that failed to materialize (owing to a snowstorm, ha) last December or so. Both sides seem lovingly addicted to both their demonizing stereotypes of each other and their Ã¼ber-flattering stereotypes of themselves: but no violence or overt confrontations that I’ve seen or heard of. Your humble correspondent Tdawwg makes sure to mildly antagonize both sides, always!
gregSea

“filled with potentially fatal flaws” – wait isn’t that the tag line instead for the Post itself? :-)
Nylund

I tried it for my town to suggest a new route to my work. Oddly, it directs me to get OFF the dedicated bike trail and to bike on a very busy street that parallels the dedicated bike trail.

I also tried the mass transportation suggestions once. It suggested I walk on very busy streets with no sidewalks.

I’m glad their trying to do this though, and no, I don’t expect them to be able to automatically route everything everywhere perfectly, all from day one of launch.
Anonymous

I really hope all the complainers don’t ruin google bike maps.

If google is afraid to route bikers to any of the major roads, we will just be relegated to a handful of side streets and trails.

More inclusive routes are more useful.

It should be up to the user to avoid areas that make them uncomfortable.
Anonymous

I live in Portland, so creating a good bike route is pretty easy. That said, I tried out routes through some of the trickier areas going from NE to SE and it avoided areas that are horrible even though there are here and there bike lanes. It isn’t perfect but it definitely threw in some routes the standard driving directions wouldn’t have given. Much like the people who drive up closed snowy roads because their GPS told them to, discretion must be exorcised regardless of what the computer says.
TheStu

As BikeSnobNYC also points out, they picked a guy who had to rent a bike to handle this story, a guy, from the picture, you can tell is so much not a cyclist that he doesn’t actually seem to know how to put on a bike helmet.

Unsurprisingly, the comments on that article are full of anti cyclist hate, including a lovely guy who recommends that you kick all parked bikes to ruin them so you don’t have to deal with them. Wonder what he’d do if I reciprocated with all the parked cars that are much more likely to kill me than a bike?
SpeckledJim

This is a problem that will fix itself. Accident statistic mashups will tell them where not to take you!

When I’ve been biking the thing I’ve though might have helped for is a danger dial on the handlebars alongside the gear levers. Maybe it could be tied to how hard you are gripping…