BikePlanner makes navigating the city by bike so much easier

David Alpert beat me to this, so I'll just send you there. 

BikePlanner.org lets you choose a start and end point and find the best bike route. Other tools like Google Maps already give bike directions, but this one does much more. If you want to take the trip on Capital Bikeshare, it will plan walking directions to and from appropriate CaBi stations, and even integrate real-time information about which stations have bikes and free docks.

Comments

[Rootchopper]

I tried this on my bike commute. The flattest wasn't the flattest. The quickest wasn't the quickest and involved taking a left through the guardrail on 110 near the Pentagon. The safest was right tho. Needs a little work.

[antibozo]

Just fooled with it a bit and it comes up with lousy routes, IMO. Also, it doesn't seem to have any feature for overriding a segment of a route like Google Maps does.

[Chris Eatough]

Thanks for trying this out, Roothchopper and antibozo. The best thing about Bikeplanner is that the base map is open for edit by anyone. So if you get a result that doesn't seem right, you can view the base map and usually there is a correction that can bring the map and the routing more in line with reality. The openstreetmap that is used as the basemap is here: http://www.openstreetmap.org/
You can log in and start making improvements!
This is truly a community tool. Avid cyclists like yourselves are the people that collectively know all the details of our bike network, and that knowledge can be incorporated into the base map over time.
The more we use Bikeplanner and provide feedback, the more accurate it becomes!
Open Plans and BikeArlington will be bringing more tutorial info (both online and in person) to you soon to help with map editing skills).
What's important is that we see this as a great starting point that we can improve collectively, rather than dismissing it because it does not replicate our preferred routes the first time.

[antibozo]

I would agree that it's a good starting point, and i like the idea of providing a multi-axial control for safety, speed, and flatness.

An example of a serious routing problem:

http://bikeplanner.org/#8GiAl2OpGx8

Routing along Georgia Avenue using the most bike friendly setting fails to use the pedestrian bypass at the Georgia Avenue/I-495 interchange, advises crossing Georgia at Tilton Drive, a very dangerous intersection with no traffic signal, routes through private, gate-controlled property (the section labeled Arthur Ave, but which is actually Bonnywood Lane), and arguably should route entirely along the west side of Georgia using Belvedere Place and Greeley Avenue.

The ability to override sections is de rigeur, in my opinion, and would mitigate some of the routing issues. An equivalent Google Maps route to the above example has some defects of its own, but at least you can drag the route to fix them.

[Chris Eatough]

Good feedback antibozo. Entering that pedestrian bypass to the Metro station as a bike path on the openstreetmap would likely fix that routing, and would probably result in a shift over to Belvedere/Greenly. The good news is, anyone can make this update. Just log in to openstreetmap.org and make the edit! The tool will improve over time with user input in this way.

[antibozo]

Re Metro bypass: there's already something on that path on openstreetmap but there's no legend i can find (clicking on "Map Key" just brings up an empty pane for me) so i can't tell what sort of feature it is. The bypass has existed for quite a few years now, so i'd be surprised if it hasn't already been designated there.

[Chris Eatough]

The path may be there, but it also needs to be designated as "bikes allowed" and the connections to other roads need to be made. I just updated the path as "bike allowed" but I am not sure of the proper places to connect to other roads. Feel free to add this using your local knowledge.

[Beaker]

Using the most "bike friendly" settings, I got it to map my approximate best route downtown via the CCT. Then I moved the starting point no more than 100 yards to the east, and it mapped out a totally different route downtown via a series of busy streets. A good start, but not that smart.