Google today enabled the option to display bicycle lanes in Google Maps, giving cyclists the opportunity to find new and previously unexplored bike trails.
The firm reports that it has spent the last six months collecting trail information from the Rails-to-Trails Conservancy and other sources to assemble data on more than 12,000 miles of bike trails in more than 150 cities.
“My team has been keeping close tabs on all the public support for biking directions that’s been steadily coming in, but we knew that when we added the feature, we wanted to do it right,” writes Shannon Guymon, Google Product Manager.
“We wanted to include as much bike trail data as possible, provide efficient routes, allow riders to customize their trip, make use of bike lanes, calculate rider-friendly routes that avoid big hills and customize the look of the map for cycling to encourage folks to hop on their bikes. So that’s exactly what we’ve done.”
In addition to making use of dedicated bike lanes and avoiding hills, the service is also configured to prefer bike-friendly roads if a lane is unavailable and to avoid dangerous and busy intersections.
The new cycling lanes are available via the “Bicycling” layer on Google Maps, and are displayed in one of three colors:
- Dark green indicates a dedicated bike-only trail;
- Light green indicates a dedicated bike lane along a road;
- and dashed green indicates roads that are designated as preferred for bicycling, but without dedicated lanes.
The new bicycling layer is available only in the US at this time.
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