After 11 years of bringing you local reporting, the team behind the Vancouver Observer has moved on to Canada's National Observer. You can follow Vancouver culture reporting over there from now on. Thank you for all your support over the years!
EarthMatters_600.jpg

Google Maps gearing up to add bike directions feature in Canada

Cyclists on the newly opened Dunsmuir bike lane this summer

At today’s Sustainable Mobility Conference in Ottawa, spokespersons said it would be announced that biking directions will be available on Google Maps in the next few days for eight cities in Canada: Ottawa, Toronto, Edmonton, Vancouver, Calgary, Winnipeg, Gatineau and Waterloo. Canada’s Capital Region is the first region to go online with Google Bike Directions. Previously the service was only availalbe in the US. 

Canadians in those cities will soon be able to find biking directions and bike trail data in Google Maps. These biking directions easy integrate with all the other Google Maps features, so you can do a local business search to find a great new cafe, read reviews to help you decide if it’s right for you, get biking directions over to it, and pull up Street View to preview your route.

In the “Bicycling” layer, colour-coded roads indicate their suitability for biking: dark green indicates a dedicated bike-only trail; lighter green indicates a dedicated bike lane along a road; and the dotted green line indicates roads that do not have bike lanes but tend to be suitable for biking.
Each city provided their own bike data for the Bike Directions layer in Google Maps, with plans to expand the program and add new trail information.  Riders are encouraged to send feedback and route information for inclusion via the reporting tool.

Screenshot of bike directions in Portland

More in Earth Matters

What to do when the IPCC gets you down

There's only so much end of the world you can take. Here's what you can do about it.

Learning the language of climate solutions

If someone had told me how hard learning another language was I wouldn't have tried.

Failure not an option for climate movement

Saying the climate movement is a failure and we should give up is not an option.
Speak up about this article on Facebook or Twitter. Do this by liking Vancouver Observer on Facebook or following us @Vanobserver on Twitter. We'd love to hear from you.