Ride the City - DC Metro is now live

I posted to this tool before while it was still in development, but they've now decided that it is mature enough to go live with.

Washington D.C. is a great city for bicycling: its greenway network is extensive and it's relatively flat. D.C. is also home to Smartbike DC, a public bike rental program.

We're happy to announce that today bicycling in the nation's capital just got easier: Welcome Ride the City - DC Metro! This newest addition includes Washington D.C., Arlington, Alexandria, all of Fairfax, and the Maryland suburbs within the Capital Beltway. We're hopeful that by making it easier to ride bikes around the epicenter of U.S. political power that we may inspire more action to bring about improved bicycle facilities everywhere, especially in cities where biking is a sensible alternative to driving.

Ride the City - DC Metro was probably our biggest challenge to date. It was tricky because of the many jurisdictions (six counties) and various data sources that had to be organized, not to mention the 1,148 square miles of area and over 450 miles of separated (i.e. Class 1) bike ways that had to be manually edited. We're happy to have had help from many good people in the bicycling world. Among those who helped, we'd like to thank Chantal Buchser (Washington Area Bicyclist Association), Bruce Wright (Fairfax Advocates for Better Bicycling), and Jeff Hermann (Fairfax County DOT) for helping us with data, troubleshooting, and leveraging volunteers to test routes early on.

(For those of you who are new to Ride the City, keep in mind that the Cloudmade basemap that we use is based on Open Street Map, the volunteer effort to map the world. If you notice discrepancies on the map, you can edit Open Street Map yourself or tell us about it and we'll edit Open Street Map for you. To learn more about Open Street Map, click here.)

While it surely is not perfect, it is a great start to a great tool (remember how bad Mapquest directions were back in the day or have you noticed how many errors there are on Google Maps? It is a difficult task.)

Comments

[Allen Muchnick]

I hope they actually use bicyclist feedback to improve the recommended routings. Many of the routes I've tested seem infeasible or problematic, and I've found little difference between the "safe", "safer", and "direct" routings.

Once the poor routes are removed or clarified, this promises to be an awesome mapping tool. Until then, the routes should not be relied upon, but the tool can still be somewhat useful.

[Rudi Riet]

I've already suggested a correction, and they were quick in implementing it (including keying them in on a street that has limited public access). Their system admins are open to suggestions from locals (they seem to be headquartered in NYC, so their knowledge of "locals only" info for DC is limited right now). I'm very impressed with their willingness to engage the cycling community to build a useful tool.

[Catherine]

Great tool. Only thing I've noticed so far is that when starting in Upper NW, even right up against the park (Tennyson and Oregon), it never gives me the option of the Rock Creek Trail (even as "direct route" option), and I wonder if that it's because of the weekend Beach Drive situation.

Either way, super cool!

[Wayne Phyillaier]

Wow, this tool can be terrific as more of the bugs get worked out!
Yesterday I noticed the tool did not use the Georgetown Branch Trail east of Rock Creek to connect between Bethesda and Silver Spring, so I suggested the fix.
This a.m. I see it is fixed and recommends that route. I'm impressed with how fast the developers respond.

[Jordan]

Hey all,

Thanks so much for your feedback. (I remember your comments, Wayne and Rudi, and glad we fixed them so quickly for you!) Keep them coming as I'm sure there is still a lot of room for improvement.

Also I don't know if you've experimented with this, but you can also cause the routes to be adjusted for your user only if you have a preference that you think is not shared by everybody. Just right-click on any street segment and choose Edit Rating. It will allow you to give the segment a 1-7 rating that will affect the routes generated for you. Vaidila wrote a nice blog post about it here:
http://ridethecity.com/blog/new-feature-customize-your-routes

To do this you'll need to have created a Ride the City user (which is fairly painless).

Thanks,
Jordan & Vaidila

[Carla]

I still cannot find a proper route on my way to/from work. The way into work has a lot of twists and turns and confusing. When I input the way from DC back to Arlington it gives me nothing.

I just moved, and was hoping for a safe route, now that taking the 4 Mile Run path is no longer an option :(

[Washcycle]

Where are your start and stop points.