![]() ![]() “For 100 years, we have engineered every street to work fine for driving, more or less,” said Wells. He worries that first-time riders will rely on Google Maps in the same way they do for driving and follow a route blindly even if they use Google’s bike lane layer, it is not clear which bike lanes are fully protected by a physical barrier and which are simply painted onto the shoulder of a busy road. The status quo of simplistic routing options on the most popular mapping apps, said Warren Wells, the policy and planning director of the Marin County Bicycle Coalition, represents a barrier to entry for new riders. Both companies have rolled out new features to flesh out their bike mapping features in the last year and have plans to continue improving them, but there’s still a long way to go before the mapping apps serve as a reliable alternative to crowdsourcing. ![]() As a consequence, bikers have tended to rely more on crowdsourcing, either via the rider-to-rider grapevine or a patchwork of tech-focused alternatives that vary by country and city.īut the lack of a single, comprehensive bike-routing app represents an opportunity for tech companies like Google and Apple, especially given that the pandemic-related boom in biking seems to have staying power. Routing options for bikers, whose goals range from commuting to exercising, are largely missing from the platform. ![]() While Google Maps and other mapping apps increasingly offer information on where bike lanes are, its routing algorithms don't offer the same level of nuance that drivers enjoy. A quiet residential road with speed bumps but without a bike lane can feel more comfortable for bikers - especially new bikers - than a busy thoroughfare with a painted-on bike lane where delivery trucks tend to idle. For biking, though, finding the “right” route is a lot more qualitative. Estimating roughly how long it will take to drive somewhere requires little more than knowing speed limits and whether or not intersections have stop signs or stop lights. The puzzle of how to set up a mapping algorithm for driving is relatively simple compared to doing so for biking. That’s not to say it’s a cut-and-dried task, though. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |