Bike maps, redux

Hat tip, once again, to BlogTO: ridethecity.com offers a bike route planner based on OpenStreetMap, better (as far as I can tell) than what Google is offering cyclists in the United States.

It came out of some road-testing pretty well just now - I like the fact that they include off-road bike paths like the Don Valley bike trail.

My only quibble, and it's a small one, is that all the downhill routes I tested were shown as having an elevation gain; presumably they mean an elevation change.

Derek Flack at BlogTO writes:

Case in point: I'm not convinced that the above suggestion of using Davenport to get from Christie and Dupont to Bloor and Bedford is optimal. From both a safety and speed standpoint, I tend to think it makes more sense to cross through the Annex to U of T using Barton and other side streets. Not only is such a route less trafficked, but it involves less elevation gain, a factor Anderson says Ride the City tries to take into account when recommending routes.

A route planner favouring residential back streets would be useful. I used to have a similar route to the one described (Christie and Dupont to downtown) and also ended up weebling though Seaton Village.

Designing a really useful bike route planner is a lot harder than making one for drivers or pedestrians, since cyclists' preferences vary so much. Some people ride on Lakeshore (which I tried once for a block and found terrifying) and others will ride only on empty streets on nice days.

I don't know much about the back-end programming of this kind of thing, or whether this would be horrendously difficult, but it would be useful to have an option that favoured local streets while respecting one-way rules, while also crossing main streets at lights or pedestrian crossings, where possible.

Comments

[D.Powell]

I'm going to be very wary of Google directions for a while. Last week I tried to get public transit directions from Broadview Station to Eglinton and Warden.
The directions I got included:
1. Walk to Pape Startion (?! )
2. Catch bus 25D north to 16 ave (that's outside the city, folks)
3. Transfer to a Viva Green bus to McCowan Rd
4. Take bus 68B south to Warden Station (going right past our goal on the way)
5. Walk 25 minutes north to Eglinton
Elapsed time about 2 and half hours, 2 TTC fares and 1 Viva fare. . . .

Worst Directions Ever!

After literally laughing like mad for 10 minutes, we hopped the subway to Warden and caught 68B north - about 20 minutes total

BTW - I have screenshots of this suggestion and it was still giving the same insane suggestions today