Bicycle Directions

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David Rose

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Oct 20, 2007, 12:25:10 AM10/20/07

to Google Transit Trip Planner

This trip planner needs to work with bicycles. We should be able to
set a "maximum distance" between transfers. I am willing to bike up to
5 miles if it means faster travel. These "bicycle friendly" public
transit directions should include bicycle safe roads and bicycle
information. I know VTA has already collaborated such a bike-path-map
with Google. Incorporate it!

My two cents.

Peter_ito

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Oct 20, 2007, 7:07:48 AM10/20/07

to Google Transit Trip Planner

A major challenge for cycle journey planing is the availability of the
necessary raw data on cycle routes,indeed until recently the cycle was
not really considered a 'proper' form of transport at all, and in some
cases it still isn'!

OpenStreetMap (www.openstreetmap.org) aims to collect the world's
transport network and make it freely available under a creative
commons license. Most of the actual surveying is done by bike and
cycle routes and footpaths are collected. The project has been most
active in the EU to date, but the data for the US is currently being
populated with Tiger road data and this can then be enhanced with
cycling routes. The data is normally rich with cycling data, and
Google is supporting the project, they sponsored the recent conference
and Ed Parsons (from Google) gave the key note speech. (http://
sotm2007recordings.blogspot.com/2007/07/ed-parsons-keynote-cathedral-
and-gps.html). Cycle rendering from OSM data in the UK is available
here: (http://www.gravitystorm.co.uk/osm/?
zoom=13&lat=6702129.2589&lon=-29099.25401&layers=B00)

Secondly, the UK government is keen to build cycling into their
TransportDirect public transport journey planner. Some of this data
will be collected by the Ordnance Survey and some will be collected by
the cyclists themselves.
http://www.bikebiz.com/news/20461/DfT-supports-online-cycle-journey-planner

ITO is very much engaged with both of the above initiatives and in
time Google will have the data they need to cook something up!

The current data problem can be seen very clearly with this map
comparison tool (Google Maps on the left, OpenStreetMap on the right)
for my home town where there is an excellent cycle network which is
not included in the TeleAtlas data that Google use.
http://geo.topf.org/comparison/index.html?mt0=googlemap&mt1=tah&lon=1.2472057&lat=52.0615942&z=15