Street view for Bike Lanes

[chris_s]

I bet we’ve got enough folks with helmet cameras to make short work of this. It’d be a great tool.

http://m.fastcoexist.com/3023779/a-google-street-view-for-bike-lanes-now-available-in-san-francisco-and-new-york

Topic

[vvill]

It’s a decent concept, but it doesn’t really aggregate the data to anything beyond having video routes on a map, right? If you want to see a part in the middle of a route, you have to fast forward to the part of the video you want.

I just wish Google would have street view for bike lanes. I bet they could get local riders to volunteer to ride the routes too.

[PotomacCyclist]

I just found this:

http://maps.google.com/maps/about/partners/streetview/business/

Street View Partner Program
Invite the world to explore your property

If you manage a unique property, such as a park, pedestrian mall, or university campus, you can request a free visit from the Street View team. With the Street View Partner Program, we can visit your property and collect imagery using a car, trike, trolley or even snowmobile. Once the images are added to Street View, anyone can preview your property on Google Maps and you can showcase it on your website using our APIs.

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And this:

http://maps.google.com/maps/about/partners/streetview/trekker/

Be the Next Trekker

If you’re a tourism board, non-profit, university, research organization or other third party who can gain access and help collect imagery of hard to reach places, you can apply to borrow the Trekker and help map the world.

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Google Maps has a camera mounted on a pedicab to take pictures of parks, campuses, zoos and heritage sites. I don’t see why they couldn’t use it for flatter paved bike trails (but probably not hilly paths).

http://maps.google.com/maps/about/behind-the-scenes/streetview/#devices

Street View Trike

[ATTACH=CONFIG]4362[/ATTACH]

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If Google Maps got around to mapping some key trails, either with the Street View Trike or the Trekker backpack set-up, you could then create a simulated video of any segment of that trail. A third-party site allows you to do this with any Street View mapped route currently available on Google Maps. Just type in the start and stop points and it automatically fetches and plays a simulated video of all the Street View images in sequence.

I posted about that site a few months ago: http://bikearlingtonforum.com/showthread.php?5722-Animated-Street-View-of-part-of-the-15th-St-cycletrack

This is the “video” of the 15th St. cycletrack that I created on that site. It only took about 10 seconds for me to enter the info. The site does the rest of the work.

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

EDIT: Oops. I thought you all were asking about mapping bike trails like the MVT. If the street is already mapped in Street View, then just use the TripGeo site to create a video. It only takes seconds, plus a little extra time to edit the route if the automated site takes you around the wrong corner. Even then, it won’t take more than a minute or two in most cases. Then save or bookmark your map animation and click on Play. Easy as that.

[PotomacCyclist]

To create map animations of Street View images (simulated videos), just use the TripGeo site. I posted the link in this thread a few months ago:

http://bikearlingtonforum.com/showthread.php?5722-Animated-Street-View-of-part-of-the-15th-St-cycletrack

This is a map animation of the 15th Street cycletrack. It only took me about 10 seconds to create on the site:

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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It’s not a perfect solution since it follows the car traffic lanes for the most part. But it does show what the trip would look like on bike and most of the work is done for you automatically.

[Author]

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