Safe Bike Routes Made Easy

October 29, 2009 11:19 AM

Ride the City maps the best or safest urban bicycle route from point A to B. Presently featuring multi-lingual maps from New York, Chicago, Austin, Louisville, San Diego, and Seattle. Their blog posts updates about new cities added to the grid, or other topics relating to urban bicycling.
posted by netbros (16 comments total)

For Portland, OR and Milwaukee, WI, see bycycle.org.
posted by dersins at 11:24 AM on October 29, 2009

iPhone app forthcoming?
posted by adamms222 at 11:33 AM on October 29, 2009

Poor piratebowling was nearly killed by a coworker trying to get around Philadelphia! Someone add Philly to the list, stat! We can't lose piratebowling!
posted by greekphilosophy at 12:01 PM on October 29, 2009

Hey, they stole my idea!

Wait ... is there any way for users to suggest their own routes and then vote on the best?

OK, I still got an idea!

I think my Louisville routes are a lot quicker (and possibly safer - ever ridden on Westport Rd?!) than some of their suggestions.
posted by mrgrimm at 12:24 PM on October 29, 2009

This is great! I just wish there was a way for users to add routes. But I guess it's still in beta.
posted by noriyori at 12:26 PM on October 29, 2009

Philadelphia area maps from the bicycle coalition.
posted by cmfletcher at 12:36 PM on October 29, 2009

Los Angeles, please!
posted by queensissy at 1:57 PM on October 29, 2009

Why didn't they use openstreetmap and automatically get all bike routes, rather than just these few cities?
posted by DU at 2:36 PM on October 29, 2009

for UK see www.bikehike.co.uk.
posted by mjg123 at 3:35 PM on October 29, 2009

This is great! Thanks!

I'm surprised that Google Maps doesn't already do this. My idea is a similar thing for pedestrians, except instead of "safer" I want "quicker"; I want a route where I can take shortcuts across parking lots, etc. Probably not worth the effort, but I would use it.
posted by twoleftfeet at 4:48 PM on October 29, 2009

Well, they still try to take me down a step street near my house, despite emailing them about this problem a few months ago.

Step street: that's about eight flights of stairs. Yes, you can do that with a bicycle, but is that a reasonable route?
posted by sciencegeek at 5:24 PM on October 29, 2009

Wow, it really doesn't work for Queens. Instead of using streets with bike lanes, it suggests streets that are much heavier trafficked, and without dedicated bike lanes.
posted by rottytooth at 7:57 PM on October 29, 2009

Looks like in DC your best bet is still either WABA's commuter routes Googlemap or their list of subregional and destination maps.

A shout out too for giving away free bike lights yesterday...WABA is so the awesome.
posted by kittyprecious at 5:46 AM on October 30, 2009

Minneapolis has Cyclopath, which is rather more complicated but has a lot more features. Try it, even if you don't live there!
posted by miyabo at 1:17 PM on October 30, 2009

San Francisco Bicycle Route Planner (self link)
posted by jcruelty at 10:10 AM on November 3, 2009

This is possibly the most useful thing I've ever found on Metafilter, so thank you!
posted by Jess the Mess at 2:18 PM on November 6, 2009