Easier to plan, anyway. No more fumbling with the giant paper map your local biking organization publishes; Google has unleashed biking directions! Now you really have no excuse for avoiding biking to work / school / wherever you spend your days.
I expected some hiccups as I played around with it, but I couldn’t find any. The directions route me to the best (safest) route, whether I want to go downtown or ride the trails out past the suburbs.
In fact, I’ve been finding trails I didn’t even know existed! Apparently it’s possible to ride from Milwaukee to both Madison (85 mi) and Chicago (94 mi) almost entirely on dedicated bike/pedestrian trails.
Even my tiny hometown, with its one lonely (albeit very long) trail is included.
Right now it seems it’s not possible to use street view along with the biking information, but hopefully that will be rolled out in the future as well.
You can thank Rails to Trails for all this. And maybe while you’re checking out their site, you might want to throw a donation their way. A worthy organization with which my dad has been involved for several years, they’re the ones that are responsible for that one long trail in my hometown.
Happy trails!
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