Animated Street View of part of the 15th St. cycletrack

I came across this site that allows you to create Street View animations from Google Maps just by entering in start/end points. You can modify the route manually too. I created this “animation” simply by typing in a start and end address and clicking a button. It took about 10 seconds.

http://s3.tripgeo.com/dirmap/map.htm?from=500%2014th%20st%20nw,%20washington%20dc&to=2900%2015th%20st%20nw,%20washington%20dc&maptype=1&mode=2&ah=1&at=1&draggable=1

Click the “Play” button to view.

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Since Google hasn’t mapped out most bike trails in Street View, you can’t use this tool to create animations of bike trails. Maybe in the future. But for road routes, this is a very convenient tool to use, especially for those without a GoPro or other action camera/helmet cam.

You can select Bicycle as the Travel Mode. I think that shifts the pre-selected route to bike-friendly routes (defined as those with bike lanes or recommended bike routes, on Google Maps). That’s why my map follows the 15th St. cycletrack instead of taking other possible turns between the start and end points. You can manually alter the route by clicking and dragging on the bottom Map View. That also takes just a few seconds to do.

Directions View: http://tripgeo.com/DirectionsMap.aspx

And if you happen to bike on Mars, you can look at Street View images from Mars too (images from NASA Mars vehicles, via Google Maps):

http://tripgeo.com/mars.htm

There is a Trail Charts tool, but I think it involves more manual work than the Directions Map does.