RidetheCity.com is a service that maps the best bike routes in New York. You add a starting point and an end point and the service finds dedicated bike lanes, greenways, and other “safe” routes for you to take on your two-wheeler through the mean streets of the city.
We’ve just been given permission to let you folks beat up their latest incarnation, RidetheCity 2.0 with a few interesting updates. Co-creator Jordan Anderson reports:
- Much faster routing and overall performance
- Better looking maps
- SMS support
- Sort of wonky, but workable multi-language support
- Better info. about bike shops and rentals
The new service uses CloudMade Web Maps Lite tiles for a far prettier interface and it seems snappy as heck. The map is considerably nicer to look at and the sharing system is great – you can send an SMS message with your directions to your phone for orienteering on the go.
There’s even a bonus for Brooklyn-based readers: RidetheCity is having a launch party on Saturday at Radegast at 113 N 3rd Street in Wiliamsburg, Brooklyn from 2pm until 6pm. They’ll be giving out RidetheCity schwag and one lucky person will win a Bicycle Habitat gift card.
The new site will go live tonight but feel free to test it on their sexy beta server until then. They even have a widget for those so inclined.
I’m just getting into cycling myself. I’d love a service like this for Silicon Valley/San Francisco.
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I love biking as well. I wonder when Google will incorporate this into Maps?
- Not from India
That’s neat, but WikiCity does the same for hundreds more cities – not just NY.
As someone who lived in NYC for a long time and biked frequently, this app is beyond useless to me. I am sorry to sound so critical here, but for anyone who has ridden a bike before in NYC, you should know there’s absolutely no difference riding on a street with “bike lane” vs. one that doesn’t. They are all jammed with cars and no New York drivers would actually care about staying out of the bike lane. If I were going from point A to point B by bike (btw, this rarely happens in NYC, because we all know if we park our bike on the street it’s gonna get stolen), I am going to take the shortest route since I know I will have the equal chance of getting killed by a crazy cab driver anyway.
On the other hand, when I ride my bike for recreational purposes, I have always wondered where are the safest bike paths without cars. The only way to find out was to explore yourself (the bike paths along the rivers, central park, etc.) If the app is able to show me all these safe paths, it would be very useful. Or even, if I specify I want to bike for 20 miles, what’s the best route to take, that would be very helpful as well.
I think the team is targeting the wrong crowd. Think of the people who bike for recreational purposes, rather than those who bike for transportation. Because seriously, the only ones who I can think of biking for pure transportation purposes are the delivery boys, and I don’t think that’s the right audience you want.
I complete agree with Ray. The team should combine statistics for where most cyclists get hit by cars and create “danger zones” so future cyclists can avoid those streets (and similarly, days and times to avoid cycling).
I think another useful feature is for the App is for it to tell the user where there are bikes which are not properly chained up. This way, for bike thieves like me, the threat of being caught stealing your bikes is minimized
Maybe it’d be useful if they included reviews from different people on how safe or usable the bike routes are. I think an automated system can’t actually tell you how safe a bike route is unless those who came up with the system actually explored the route themselves.
I live in LA, where not many people bike, but people surf. It would be great to check out what’s the best path from point A to point B thru the ocean given the current oceanic topography and tidal patterns. It would also be great to have the option to avoid certain areas of the water (e.g. shark infested waters, sinkholes, African pirate ships).
That’s very cool.
I need the same in San Frandisco.
Nice. I will check out the site next time I travel to NYC. In the meantime, I will be riding on less busy roads in California http://map.tour...california.org/
whoa, haters. i bike in nyc and i use ridethecity all the time. i think it’s *at least* good for people like me who aren’t hard-core bikers who sweat the travel details…i like being able to find routes that have bike lanes.
looking forward to the redesign!!
Pretty slick stuff. Would love to see it rolled out to other cities.