Google Maps bike route fix
April 8, 2010 at 9:24 AM by Dr. Drang
As I said at the end of this post last month, I sent Google a bug report about their new bicycling directions. I had tested out the new feature by asking it for the directions from my home to office, a route that I bike almost every weekday 8-9 months of the year. The directions it gave me were pretty good, but had one dangerous (and, frankly unnecessary) crossing of a busy street at an uncontrolled intersection.
Google recognized from the beginning that their biking directions could be dangerous, or at the very least, unusable, so they asked for bug reports,
and I sent them one. This morning I got a reply:
Your Google Maps problem report has been reviewed, and you were right! We’ll update the map soon and email you when you can see the change.
Report history
Problem ID: AFDB-B658-AA9C-22A1Your report: 1. No one can safely ride a bike on this stretch of Ogden Ave. There’s far too much traffic and the speed limit is too high. 2. There’s no traffic light at this intersection. This, combined with the volume of traffic on Ogden, makes it almost impossible to cross this intersection to get to the bike path on the south side of Ogden. The safer way to cross Ogden is at the Frontenac intersection one block west, where there are traffic lights.
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Thanks for your help,
The Google Maps team
Just for the record, I don’t need an exclamation point at the end of a sentence telling me I’m right. I’m actually accustomed to being right—it’s not a surprise. Maybe it is a surprise to Google when someone else is right.
Anyway, it’s nice to see Google being responsive to user input like this. I’ll be interested to see if they use my suggested change when they update the directions.
