Petition asks Google Maps for "Bike There" Option

An online petition asking Google to provide a “Bike There” feature to
its existing “Drive There” and “Take Pubic Transit” options went online
recently. The petition may be found here.

The petition was written by Peter Smith, who posted the idea to the BicycleAustin discussion forums, looking for a solution to his own bike route-finding¬ but also aware that the software would serve the interests of others as well.

Here's some Smith's original post:

"Google Maps now provides public transportation route information for many major U.S. cities, including Austin. So, if you go to Google Maps and map out a route from your house to the grocery store, the default/selected option is 'Drive There', but you can click the 'Take Public Transit' link and it'll totally plan out your route.
The question is - can Google do this for bicycle routes? And if not, can we do it for them/us, using the Google Maps API?"

Coming from a software background, Smith understands the tools he’d
like to see integrated in a Google “Bike There” option and he has
clearly recognized the demand for such a tool: “To me, this is a key
ingredient to the bicycling puzzle. We definitely need to have this.”

Though Smith was aware of existing sites Bikely, MapMyRide and ByCycle bike route maping programs – they did not cover the Austin area.

On Thursday Feb 28 (when Momentum first heard of it) the petition grew by 1,000 signatures in less than 8 hours.

More information about the Google feature request is available here.

We'll be watching with interest to see whether the cycle-friendly types at Google who will help bring the "Bike There" feature into being.