From right here in Austin, a fellow named Peter Smith is leveraging the power of Blog to advocate for a new feature in Google Maps, “Bike There.” According to Smith, his blog and petition (27,000 signatures as of this writing) were created “to ask Google to help us make the world safer for bicyclists by adding bicycle routes to Google Maps.”

It’s interesting to think about the power that this kind of integration would have, as compared to a mashup. Part of the genius of the Goog’s mapping system is that it can be used for mapping just about anything, but can it be repurposed for wayfinding? While there are countless genius Gmaps mashups out there, it seems that providing useful wayfinding information is not quite as simple as plotting points. To find the best bike route from my house to yours, something more powerful is probably necessary.

Google Transit

For wayfinding on Gmaps, Google started with car travel directions, and expanded a year ago to include public transit. If you’ve never used Google Transit, I encourage you to take a look. It’s integrated with the Google maps interface: any time you choose to “Get Directions”, there will be an option to “Take Public Transit” if you live in a city that has provided transit data to Google.

A nice little flourish in the Transit interface is a price comparison: it will show your transit fare against an estimated cost of driving a car the same distance. Of course, biking there would cost next to nothing.