Google Maps now shows bike lanes for Canadian cities

Vancouver’s Mayor Gregor Robertson is going to be happy about the latest development from Google; yesterday, they announced that Google Maps will be featuring bike routes in Canada.

Ottawa, Toronto, Edmonton, Kelowna, Vancouver, Calgary, Winnipeg, Gatineau and Waterloo residents will all be able to see where they can go in their city without driving their cars. TheNextWeb broke the story:

Like in the States, Google has even marked the routes depending on how “bike friendly” they are. Dark green means there is a dedicated bike lane, dotted green a “bike friendly” street. It looks like Google did their homework, my street is a designated “bike route” so there are lots of bikes on it, sometimes much to the chagrin of drivers and pedestrians, and it’s marked with a dotted green line.

I wish Google has rolled this out while most of Canada was still interested in biking, but I’m sure come summer, casual riders, tourists (Vancouver especially has a lot of bike touring you can do), and maybe even regular riders will be tapping into Google Maps to peddle their way to where they are going.

True that, TNW. Why did they decide to release this feature in the dead of winter, as opposed to, say, any other season in this country?

Oh, well, better late than never, I suppose.