My two cents.
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
Peter Miller
ITO World Ltd
www.itoworld.com