German Bike Routes on Google Maps

Naviki is a German bike route application. The application uses Google Maps with OpenStreetMap cycling route data to help cyclists find the shortest or most cycle friendly route between two locations.

Users just need to add a starting location and a destination and select whether they want the shortest or the most bike friendly route. The bike friendly route takes into consideration altitudes and congestion in calculating a route optimised for cyclists.

The calculated route is displayed on a Google Map alongside an elevation profile and details such as the distance of the route and an estimated time for the journey. The waypoints of the calculated route can also be downloaded for GPS units.

Bike Lane Offenders on Google Maps

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From the same brains behind Uncivil Servants, the crowd-sourced Google Map for reporting illegal parking in New York, comes this map for reporting illegal car parking in bike lanes.

MyBikeLane is a map reporting system for reporting vehicles parked illegally in bike lanes. The system is active in a large number of cities around the world. To report a car with MyBikeLane the user just needs to take a photo of the offending vehicle and jot down its license plate number.

The MyBikeLane map for each city shows the location of all the submitted reports. The map sidebar provides a league table of the worst offending vehicles in the city. The licence plate number of the most reported cars are listed in descending order in the sidebar.

Bike Directions with Accident Black Spots

Open Road from OpenFile is an awesome bike directions application that shows you all the reported bike accidents that have occurred along a suggested bike route.

To use the application you just need to enter a starting point and your destination or click on the map to set both points. The application then uses the Google Maps API bike directions function to suggest a route. All bike accidents reported to the police are then shown along the route and the most accident prone location is also highlighted on the route.

It is also possible to adjust the date range for the accident data shown and the accident data is automatically updated on the map. Below the map Street View shots of the accident hotspots are also displayed.

The application currently works in six Canadian cities.

Via: PatrickCain.ca

Capital Bikeshare on Google Maps

The Capital Bikeshare Tracker is a Google Map that displays the locations of the 140 bike stations of the Washington, D.C. Capital Bikeshare.

The map uses dynamic map markers to show the current availability of bikes and dock spaces at each bike station. If you click on a marker you can get the exact number of available bikes and free dock spaces.

It is also possible to click through on each bike station to view the usage patterns of that station. Each station can be searched to view bike and dock space availability over different periods of time.

Also See

Montreal's BIXI - a map of Montreal's bike stations and current bike availability
Brisbane CityCycle - Brisbane's CityCycle bike stations and available bikes
Dublin Bikes -Dublin's bike stations and available bikes
Paris Velib - Paris' bike stations and available bikes
CityMapper London - London route planner that also shows you how many bikes are available at your nearest bike station.

Improving Cycling Safety with Google Maps

The Times newspaper is running a campaign in the UK to make Cities Fit For Cycling. As part of that campaign the Times are asking its readers to add unsafe cycling roads to the Make Britain #cyclesafe Google Map.

So far the map has had over 5,000 submissions. When users are zoomed out on the map they can view a heatmap of where the most submission have been made. If users zoom in they can view the individual submissions as map markers.

To submit an unsafe road or area that you think needs improvements to make cycling safer you need to zoom right in on the location and then double-click on the map.

Brisbane's CityBikes on Google Maps

City Cycle NOW! is a real-time Google Map of the number of bikes currently available at each of Brisbane's CityCycle bike stations.

The official CityCycle website also uses Google Maps to show the location of bike stations in the city. However to find out the number of bikes available at individual stations on the CityCycle map involves clicking on the station's map marker.

City Cycle NOW! on the other hand uses a coloured map marker system to show stations with no bikes (red), stations with only a few bikes available (orange) and stations with more than five bikes (green).

South West England's Off Road Cycle Map

The lack of cycle paths on Google Maps is still a problem in many parts of the world. If you live in the south west of England though you can use The South West Adventure Cycle Map.

The map includes off road cycle trails in England’s south west region, including paths in Exmoor and Dartmouth National Park and in the Blackdown Hills. The trails are colour coded to show their severity.

To get more details about a trail you can click on it's track on the map and get information on it's length, difficulty and type of terrain. You can even click on points along a trail to get an elevation chart.

Route Planning with Google Maps

Komoot is a German language route planning application with a number of really useful features.

The site uses OpenStreetMap, Google Satellite and Google Terrain map layers to help users plan their route. When planning a hiking or cycling route users can view points of interest along the route and adjust the trip to take in any that take their fancy.

Finished routes come with lots of information, such as the length of the route, its difficulty and an altitude chart. The app is available for the desktop and for iPhone and Android smart phones.

Dublin Bikes on Google Maps

Dublin Bikes uses Google Maps to show the location of all the hire network's bike stations.

It is possible to search the map by location to find the nearest bike hire stations to your location. If you click on a map marker you can view how many bikes are currently available and how many free stands are available.

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A Helicopter View of Cycling Routes

Google Maps recently added a popular option to view a quick preview of your driving directions using the Google Earth browser plugin. The Google Earth tour was quickly dubbed 'helicopter view' by many users.

Perfilderuta is a website that lets you plan bicycling routes and it also features a 'helicopter view' of your routes using the Google Earth plugin.

Creating cycling routes with Perfilderuta is very easy. You just need to right click on the map once to set your starting point and once to set the destination (you also have the option to use main or secondary roads in your route).



The map will then display your route on the Google Map and tell you the distance, the maximum and minimum altitude of the route and the total ascent and descent on your route. Users can then view an altitude chart of the route or view a tour of the route in Google Earth.

Perfilderuta includes a lot of other very handy options, such as adding localities to the route (this will tell you how far it is to different towns and locations along your route). You can also download the route to use with a GPS unit.

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Cycling in Madrid with Google Maps

Mapa de la Bici de Madrid is a nice bike map for Madrid. As well as showing bike lanes, recommended roads and planned cycle routes in the city the map also includes a number of useful tools for cyclists.

The map includes a measuring tool, a search option and quick links to zoom to different districts in the city. It even includes coloured arrows on the cycle routes to show the rate and direction of incline at different positions on the route.

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Hiking in France with Google Maps

Randonee dans l'Ain is a really nicely designed website promoting hiking, horse riding and bike trails in Ain, an area of the region Rhône-Alpes in France.



Each of the trails can be viewed on Google Maps. The route of each selected trail is displayed on the map and you can select to view restaurants, activities, photos and accommodation along and near the trail.



Each trail also comes with an elevation chart and with information concerning the route's length and the approximate time it takes to complete.



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Copenhagen Bike Parking on Google Maps

Anyone who has ever visited Copenhagen won't be in any doubt about how much its inhabitants like to cycle. It is said that at least 36% of all Copenhagen citizens commute to work, school or university by bicycle.

The city council of Copenhagen has released open data showing all of the bike parking locations in the city. Soren of microformats.dk imported the data into Fusion Tables and, in less than ten minutes, he created this Google Map of bike parking locations.

The map shows 4,190 bike parking spots throughout Copenhagen, with space for 48,115 bicycles to be parked. This would probably be more than enough for most cities, however with half a million people owning bikes in the city it means that many citizens still can't park their bikes in official spots.

Soren hopes that his map will be used by those campaigning for more bike parking locations to identify those areas that need more bike parking spots.

Copenhagen Bike Parking Map

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Running & Cycling Apps with Google Maps

Afstand Meten

Dutch website Afstand Meten allows joggers and cyclists to create and save routes using Google Maps. The app is available on the desktop and for the Android market and iPhones.

Using Afstand Meten users can create new tracks or search for tracks created by other users. When searching for saved tracks you can refine the search by the 'most viewed', the 'shortest distances' or 'the longest distances'.

Cycle Routes UK

Cycle Routes UK is a cycle routes planner for UK cyclists. Using Cycle Routes UK users can search for cycling routes, add their own routes and comment and rate cycling routes.

Each route is displayed on a Google Map. Alongside the map of the route Cycling Routes UK displays the length, difficulty, the estimated duration and an estimation of calories burned.

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Tracking Bike Accidents with Google Maps

San Francisco Bike Accident Tracker 2.0

The Bay Citizen has improved their Google Map of bike accidents in the Bay Area. The map now includes five years of bike accident statistics for the whole Bay Area.

Cyclists can use the map to find out where accident hot-spots are located. It is also possible to filter the data shown on the map by date, road conditions and accident type.

As well as displaying the accident data with Google Maps the Bay Citizen has also created a series of charts exploring bike accidents in the Bay Area.

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San Francisco Bike Routes on Google Maps

San Francisco BikeMapper

The San Francisco BikeMapper uses Google Maps to provide biking directions using all existing Class I, II and III bike routes in San Francisco, southern Marin County and northern San Mateo County.

Using the BikeMapper it is possible to find the best bike route for your trip with turn-by-turn directions. To get directions you just need to enter your starting point and destination. You can also select to get the shortest bike friendly route or, importantly for hilly San Francisco, the flattest bike friendly route.

The results of your search are then displayed on the map and the turn-by-turn directions are listed in the map sidebar. Details of the route are also provided, such as the length of the journey, the estimated time and the carbon emissions saved.

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Brazilian Bike Routes on Google Maps

En Vou de Bike

En Vou de Bike is a Brazilian bike route generator with some nice features.

En Vou de Bike uses Google Maps to provide bike directions. To add a starting point to the map you can just drag the green bike icon onto the map. To add your destination you can drag the red 'pare' icon to the location you wish to end up.

Your route is then calculated and displayed on the map and the directions are shown in the map sidebar. Each route generated is saved and you can browse the already generated routes on the Mapas e Rotas.

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Track Bike Thieves with Google Maps

SpyLamp

The SpyLamp is a covert bicycle tracker disguised as a functioning tail light. Incorporating a GPS unit and a motion sensor the SpyLamp is able to detect if your bike has been stolen and send you a warning.

If the SpyLamp detects movement it will send you a text message. You can then track your bike on Google Maps and inform the police of its location.

The SpyLamp website has a demo map so you can see what the Google Map tracker looks like in practice (worryingly the demo thief seems to live just around the corner from my house).

Via: The Guardian

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Google Maps and Dynamic Canvas Markers

London Cycle Hire Map

This Google Map shows the number of bikes available at each of the docking stations in the London Cycle Hire scheme.

Probably the most impressive thins about this map is the HTML5 canvas map markers. The markers on the map are custom overlays drawn using the canvas element. Drawing the markers rather than using static images allows the markers to visually represent the number of cycles available.

As well as indicating the location of a cycle station, each marker visually represents the station capacity (volume of the marker) and available cycles (amount of marker filled with red). The markers are redrawn every minute to show in near real-time the number of bikes available.

Hat-tip: Street View Funny

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Cycle the Alps with Street View

Cycling the Alps

Cycling the Alps is a Google Map with a lot of information and some very nice features for anyone who is interested in cycling the Alps.

The application has featured on Google Maps Mania in the past but has recently added some nice Street View tours using the Directions Map widget wizard.

If you fancy a relaxing virtual Sunday cycle ride through the Alps then check out these two trips:

Galbier
Bonette

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