Frustrated yet again trying to use Google Maps and Mapquest to figure out a bike route to someplace I've never been, I had a sudden realization -- these folks are missing a huge business opportunity.
One that you can help them recognize.
Think about it: why do online mapping services assume you're driving? Why don't they let you tell them "I want a bike route" or "I want to use transit."
First and foremost, because we've all been conditioned to accept the view that getting around means "in a car" and that all other modes are "alternative" (read: less than). This includes the geeks providing the mapping services.
Second, because bikers have rolled over yet again, quietly submitting to mapping services that only help drivers, thus helping perpetuate driving and environmental destruction.
What should an online mapping service provide?
Simple -- just like today, it should let you select a starting and ending point. Ideally, it should also let you include intermediate way points too, because we all like to combine trips, right?
But the hands down winner is the service that, for each leg of your trip, lets you choose your mode of travel and insert restrictions on the kinds of roads. This way, bikers wouldn't be presented with maps that tell them to use the highways, for example.
So the winning online mapping service would offer you choices of mode like this:
Walking:
- Walking (shoulders OK)
- Walking (on streets with sidewalks only)
- Walking (avoid high speed traffic whenever possible)
Biking:
- Bike paths whenever possible
- Avoid high speed traffic whenever possible
- Bike on bus routes OK
Etc.
The point is that the mapping services have spent a gazillion dollars giving us a service that is really only aimed at helping us if we drive.
Now that essentially all of America has been mapped and remapped and digitized, what's needed is for the geeks to go back and work with pedestrian and bike advocacy groups to encode data about all those roads for each city and town so that if you want to walk or bike or use transit, the system only "sees" those roads and transit routes, so it never tells you to take your bike on the Capitol Beltway, for example. The roads should be scored for safety for biking and walking so that you can adjust the route to suit your preferences (like not riding your bike next to a bunch of 18 wheelers).
Help me make this happen:
Write to your online mapping service or visit the suggestion box links below and tell them you want maps that help you with all your methods of getting around, not just driving. Maybe include a link to this post.
Let's see which mapping service actually cares enough about being green to implement a service that works for non-drivers too.
Here is a contact link for Google Maps I think might work, though lord knows they don't make it easy to contact them: gblog@google.com.
Mapquest has a reasonably easy-to-find link to their online suggestion box.
Let's hit it -- so that by next Earth Day, there's an online mapping service that tells you how to walk, bike, and use transit to get where you're going.
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Comments
View as Flat
klute Posted 2:51 am
23 Apr 2007
I wish one of the Twin City NGO's would create one.
Wny wait for Google to do it?
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JMG Posted 3:15 am
23 Apr 2007
Someone pointed me to the Portland byCycle site--the task has apparently overwhelmed the little entity that created it, and that's before any updates.
The question isn't "why wait for Google," it's "How do you get Google or Mapquest to realize what an opportunity already exists?"
Both businesses are in the business of providing a service in order to attract eyeballs so that advertisers will pay money -- imagine broadening the range of eyeballs from just drivers to anyone taking any form of trip, in any mode.
"An optimist is someone who thinks this is the best of all possible worlds. A pessimist is someone who is afraid that the optimist is right."
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bk racer Posted 3:32 am
23 Apr 2007
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mihan Posted 3:43 am
23 Apr 2007
It shouldn't be too hard; MapQuest already has options that you can use to modify your route to avoid tolls, highways, etc.
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GreyFlcn Posted 3:50 am
23 Apr 2007
And it will get used more often.
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Icelander Posted 4:05 am
23 Apr 2007
Also, what some people consider a safe route others would consider a death trap. And what some people would consider an easy route others would consider too difficult. In short, bicycles are not the type of vehicles for which hard-and-fast data can be acquired.
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gogogreenguy Posted 4:21 am
23 Apr 2007
http://www.google.com/transit
It's only a few cities and uses the normal bus searching routines as its backend, but display the routes in the familiar google maps format.
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Delay And Deny Posted 4:36 am
23 Apr 2007
Google is a ponzi scheme...the only reason they do stuff is if it's high profile enough to kite the stock.
The Texeme Construct offers international text memetics construction and textcasting services. http://www.you-read-it-here-first.com
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JMG Posted 5:51 am
23 Apr 2007
You are correct that there is sometimes a lot of variation in what would appear to be identical roads, and that differnt people have differnt tastes for what is considered acceptable riding (or walking).
That's why I suggest that the mapping service work with locals to figure out subjective ratings for each stretch of roadway that go beyond the objective rating factors. That way, people can use the rating for roads that they are familiar with to estimate what they are likely to find on roads they don't.
Obvious factors that go into the objective part of the rating are width (objectively measurable), the presence of segregated bike lanes or painted lanes (objectively measurable), the average speed and traffic load on the roadway (objectively measurable), number of accidents, intersections, and curb cuts (entries/exits) in the roadway (all objectively measurable). In other words, there's an awful lot about a road that is not subjective and that probably correlates pretty darn closely to its suitability for riding.
Add to that the use of local expertise (bike transport planners, bike clubs, pedestrian advocacy groups) to flag where the objective rating for a road is too high and where some other factor confounds the rating, and you probably have a pretty useful system.
As for the legal threat, that's a bogus boogie man. Purveyors of information aren't liable for it; people selling books on mushrooms aren't liable when someone dies from eating the wrong one; people who publish books on rafting/climbing/scuba/ etc. aren't liable when people kill themselves doing those things. Bike clubs offer bike maps now--do you think they are courting liability? Of course not--they offer what they offer, routes that some people have found useful for themselves. Do you think GPS systems are liable when people wind up driving into a washed out road and drowning or that sellers of nautical charts are liable when someone grounds themselves? (Answer: No, they're not.)
With Google or Mapquest, the service would simply be providing data in response to the user's request:
Tell me how I can get from A to B using (mode: foot/bike/bus/combo) with options to specify restrictions (I only want bike paths, I'm only willing to ride on roads rated "5" or better for bikes, etc.)
"An optimist is someone who thinks this is the best of all possible worlds. A pessimist is someone who is afraid that the optimist is right."
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claxton6 Posted 8:41 am
23 Apr 2007
That way, you can allow for commercial entities to generate data for mapping services, as well as public and non-profit entities using the data they already have on streetways.
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Engineer Posted 9:28 am
23 Apr 2007
"Wiki-Route" anyone???
Common sense is an oxymoron...
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Biodiversivist Posted 10:41 am
23 Apr 2007
In the end, it all comes down to biodiversity. Poison Darts--Protecting the biodiversity of our world
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rjl20 Posted 10:56 am
23 Apr 2007
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TariffDude Posted 11:37 am
23 Apr 2007
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Jeremy Cherfas Posted 2:41 pm
23 Apr 2007
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Gar Lipow Posted 3:24 pm
23 Apr 2007
You do know to check with a human being if possible. all of the mapping services will give really weird directions on occasion--have you going the wrong way down a one say street, follow a road miles past its end, take a right turn from an exit that only allows you to move left, that sort of thing.
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