# Google Maps coming to a trail near you?



## ukbloke (Sep 1, 2007)

On my ride today I spotted (well, more accurately, nearly collided with) a bike towing a trailer modified to hold a large home-brew platform with what appeared to be cameras on top. This was on Stevens Creek Trail just south of the bridge over Central. This can only mean one thing - Google has a project to add bike trails to Google Maps and Street View! 

I expect that their focus will be on commute routes, and what better place to start than the trails connecting to the GooglePlex HQ in Mountain View? The whole camera assembly looked liked they'd ripped it off one of their cars and jerry-rigged it to fit in a trailer. It did not look like the kind of thing you would take down Resolution at Skeggs, but I could imagine it being used on fire roads (though I doubt that is their intention).

Perhaps they will come up with a MapMyRide/Bikely web application of their own? (ie. one that actually works and scales).


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## sometimerider (Sep 21, 2007)

Yes, it's been around for several months now - at least for some bike paths.

If you've ever used the "Street View" feature of Google maps, where you can see pictures taken from the street of selected roads, you might welcome a new extension to this service.

We frequently ride parts of the Monterey Bay Coastal Bike Path (http://www.mtycounty.com/pgs-parks/bike-path.html). Google has now provided "street view" pictures of a portion of that path - most of the downtown Monterey segments. Here is one example of what you can see: http://tinyurl.com/lpd6kd

To actually see where there is a street-viewed path on a Google map, you have to grab the orange person icon, just above the magnification scale and pull it onto the map. Then the roads and paths that have a street view will be highlighted in blue. You can drop the icon onto any of those highlighted routes and see the picture at that point. To learn how to use "Street View", go to http://maps.google.com/support/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=68381, and watch the video available there.

I expect Google will be expanding this path coverage in the future.


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## Chico2000 (Jul 7, 2011)

That sounds pretty cool.

I was looking for the thread about street view pictures b/c I was mapping out a climb for tomorrow and came across this picture. I guess this climb is so nasty it even hurts to walk it.


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