Friday, February 27, 2009

Google Maps Petition

I know we focus a lot (as we should!) on local efforts, but here is a national effort worth checking out: http://www.petitiononline.com/bikether/petition.html

"We would like a 'Bike There' feature added to Google Maps - to go with the current 'Drive There' and 'Take Public Transit' options.

The feature would take into account actual bicycle lanes from the locality being mapped, and it would automatically plan a route for a bicyclist, possibly even providing the cyclist options for either the most direct route, or the most bicycle-friendly (safest) route. The Google Maps-based third party site, byCycle.org (http://byCycle.org/), provides these features for two metro areas - Portland, Oregon and Madison, Wisconsin, and there are countless other mapping initiatives around the world aimed at accomplishing the same goal. We hope that Google will consider building this feature into the core Google Maps service.

There are many reasons why this feature would be a wonderful edition to Google Maps. Among them, some of the most influential would be to:
* Make bicycling safer for millions of bicyclists around the world.
* Empower world citizens to better adapt their lifestyles to face the challenges of global climate change.
* Help Google realize its core mission of 'organizing the world's information and making it universally accessible and useful.'

5 comments:

EB said...

Thanks for the post.

How is the East treating ya?

The Lucas said...

That'd be a neat idea for sure. -- Not so useful here with all 3/4 of a mile of bike lanes. It'd be more of a challenge to get it set up here.

EB said...

The Lucas: Shut your Pie hole, go stuff it with some baked beans followed by some h20 from a recycled 32 oz. Gatorade bottle.

The Lucas said...

EB: Go ride your mustache into a parked car you Sigur Ros listening to creepy leaky bottomed shadow crawler. Get bent.

I like my bottle! mmm... baked beans.

Douglas said...

Done.
46,046 votes so far.