I use Transit, but I’m always curious what else is out there, particularly for bike navigation on protected bike lanes.
I use OSM a lot for planning routes, decide where to pass, and then I set Google Maps and fight with it. But I didn’t find anything satisfying yet for turn by turn. I’m on the the verge of making my itineraries in GPX form.
Googke Maps in my city and region sucks so much for bikes. But I look at its suggestions, ignore them when I know a safer route, and follow them if I didn’t plan a route and need to get from A to B.
Honestly? I just use Google Maps. It prioritizes putting me on protected bike lanes and even shows me on my route where I’d be protected, just in a painted bike lane, or amongst cars.
I’ve never been unhappy with Google Maps public transit
You’re in luck I guess. Google maps here in Montreal is pretty bad with knowing protected bike lanes and safe routes. It will often send you in a car sewer when there is a perfectly safe route two streets over.
To me, Google maps has outdated data for cycling. It’s confused by contraflow lanes. It also often shows pedestrian paths as cycling paths. And it doesn’t have all the paths and even if you write to them to correct a path, they will not.
I still use Google maps because of how easy it is for turn by turn amd I didn’t find anything to replace it yet. But I have to inspect the route and make changes on the fly because Google doesn’t know about modal filters and contraflow lanes.
Tbh I just edit Google maps when it’s wrong.
I’d rather be contributing that effort to open street maps, but there just aren’t great turn-by-turn apps for that imo
Can I ask how you edit bike paths on Google maps? All I’ve ever been able to do is fill reports (the feedback system) that seems to be ignored. Everything I find about this says to use the feedback system. But I’ve done it a few times and it worked for something about a road, many years ago, but I tried it a few times again for bike paths and nothing was corrected.
Google Maps is convenient, yes. But I’ve been trying to de-Google my life recently, and finding alternative map programs has been difficult.
I was using OsmAnd~ for a while, then switched to Organic Maps. Just recently, I’ve switched to CoMaps, since Organic Maps started including affiliate links and could potentially be harvesting user data to sell.
It’s always a struggle, trying to find free open-source software (FOSS) that provides a reliable service without collecting your information.
EDIT: As part of my de-Googling, I’ve been trying to find software through F-Droid instead of the Google Play store, since Google can potentially track my apps and their data usage through their store. CoMaps is available on F-Droid.
Totally agree! I love this effort, but haven’t been able to switch off of Google Maps yet since I don’t find them to work as well for public transit
We used Google maps today, but it put us on an actual stroad with sharrows. Five lane, 35 mph road. We uncomfortably rode on the sidewalk. On the way back, our group noticed that there was a large bike lane on the other side of the road that Google didn’t use, and that it kept us on car lanes, not safer power center parking lots and all that.
Somewhat disheartening, unfortunately. :/
