Planning a Bike Trip with Web Maps

The blog Traveling Forever has an excellent post today that demonstrates how to plan a bicycle trip using MapQuest: Enter your starting and ending locations, then click "Get Directions", like normal. Next, you'll get your directions, only they'll probably follow a highway at some point. To make this bicycle friendly, click "Avoid Highways" and "Shortest […]

The blog Traveling Forever has an excellent post today that demonstrates how to plan a bicycle trip using MapQuest:

Enter your starting and ending locations, then click "Get Directions", like normal. Next, you'll get your directions, only they'll probably follow a highway at some point. To make this bicycle friendly, click "Avoid Highways" and "Shortest Distance". Then click update directions, and voila, you've got a bicycle route ready.

I tried it to plot a route between San Francisco and San Jose, CA (a drive that normally requires the 101 or 280 freeways) and it worked, giving me a slightly less dangerous itinerary involving state routes and expressways.

Out of curiosity, I tried to replicate this trick using the other popular maps services. To my surprise, none of them offered any bike-friendly directions. I tried Google Maps, Yahoo Maps and Yahoo Maps Beta, MSN and Microsoft Live Local. I also dug through the FAQs for the various services, and I found a "coming soon" note inside Google Maps.

Hey, how about that. MapQuest Wins!

[via Digg]