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We had a lively discussion about Google Maps in my cycling group. It's very annoying to have a map that is only designed to show the fastest route, and that for

• ListeningPie 2y ago
  I use Magic Earth on iOS where a route can be saved as a file and then shared with others.
• peebeebee 2y ago
  Most of our software is bland because it is about practicality and functionality. A UI should do a lot more things than to be expressive. Being expressive is very low on the list. Reliability, accessibility and recognisability are very high on that list. Expressiveness also tends to fight accessibility and recognisability. This also goes for other design fields. As a (stupid) example: I can design all kinds of weird wonderful stairs in public places, that will give the place some charm. But the best one will be with a more boring ramp of with about 5degrees of incline, because that's the wheelchair-accessible one.
  • nicbou 2y ago
    Style is not the only form of expression. Adapting a tool to your workflow is also a form of expression. I'm surprised that with all of their resources, tech companies still build software that completely ignore relatively common use cases like hiking.
    • dsign 2y ago
      There are plenty of apps with maps for hiking. Hell, I use QGis when I go in long-paddle boarding expeditions (a general purpose GIS environment). I'm fine with letting the big monopolies handle the 90% case of going from A to B as quickly and efficiently as possible. And I'm very, very grateful for the other 10% which is enjoyable and in the realm of citizen agency.
• subroutine 2y ago
  As you pointed out, there are many other map apps that target specific communities and use cases. It doesn't seem too surprising that google maps is designed primarily for the most common use case (the fastest route from current location to a specific destination).
• wiredfool 2y ago
  I wound up creating a vector data set + formatting that highlights all of the local roads in Ireland, minus ones that are not connected. N level roads are screened back, M dropped out completely.
• netsharc 2y ago
  A crowdsourced map with a collection of "favorite routes" would be an interesting idea, although some people (including me) hate trodding down beaten paths. I suppose these are mostly on websites/specialized apps, eg. for hikers.
  • sfphoton 2y ago
    Actually you can fit your needs with Openstreetmap. People regularly upload public GPS traces that you can view - thus, get a rough idea of how popular a path is. But OSM also shows all the paths, so you can avoid beaten paths as well.
  • NeoTar 2y ago
    Strava has a global heat-map for running, cycling etc. although I believe it is a subscription-only feature. There is also your personal heat-map which is cool to see if you use the app enough.
    • habi 2y ago
      Not subscription-only, but „ Street-level detail is available only to registered Strava athletes“ on https://www.strava.com/heatmap https://www.strava.com/heatmap so you need an account.
• reddalo 2y ago
  Shout out to OsmAnd, it's a great app. Worth the money for the premium version.
  • dtx1 2y ago
    And its free in fdroid edit: Don't understand the Downvotes, the Version on F-Droid is a legitimate free version of the premium app version: https://f-droid.org/de/packages/net.osmand.plus/ https://f-droid.org/de/packages/net.osmand.plus/
  • c0nsumer 2y ago
    I've personally been using Gaia more and more. OsmAnd is great, but the additional layers available (beyond OSM) in Gaia are really useful in remote areas.
• eCa 2y ago
  OsmAnd is awesome, I use it especially when walking in new cities. For cycling though, I’m a happy user of cycle.travel[1]. [1] https://cycle.travel/map https://cycle.travel/map
  • aa-jv 2y ago
    >walking in new cities I do enjoy digital life, but you know what else rocks, apropos walking in new cities[0]? Custom maps, printed. Its fun to look at the little piles of maps I've made for myself over the years, from Frome to Rome, Berlin to Pristine .. In fact, I think I prefer printed maps over digital, for personal adventure/navigation needs. ([0] Disclaimer: Got navionics and predict wind running on multiple tablets..)
    • navane 2y ago
      There's a castle in France, near Dijon, in which one wall, about eight meters high and five wide, is covered with a detailed map of all the area that belonged to that castle at one point in time. It was so detailed you had to stand close to it, two or three feet, to read it. I have never seen so much information in one map.
    • dangond 2y ago
      What do you mean by custom maps? What do you include/exclude from them, and how do you make them?
      • aa-jv 2y ago
        I use tools such as Google Maps and Open Street Maps, and I cut/paste, mostly just by eyeball, with the relevant things I might be interested in - the train stations of Rome, for example, and so on. Google Earth is also great for this, but I confess that the last one I made for myself (Berlin), I just screengrabbed and pasted my friends # in place, with the train details, etc. There's something comforting about knowing how to get around when the power goes out. Since I enjoy roaming adventures requiring navigation, making little maps for myself is basically just how I roll .. got me where I needed to be.
• madeofpalk 2y ago
  I feel this a lot cycling in London. Both Apple and Google maps really wants you to cycle along the canals, which can be a huge pain especially on busy weekends. Thankfully I know some areas well enough and I just cycle through the path 10 metres "inland", but the maps constantly want me to do a u-turn and get back on the canal.
  • philipwhiuk 2y ago
    Need a 'commute cycling' mode and a 'leisure cycling' mode :)
• jorisboris 2y ago
  I’m still looking for a map which let me optimize for “stopping as little as possible” which in practice means avoiding traffic jams and traffic lights. I notice this makes me drive more relax, and especially with a baby it’s way easier to keep the baby asleep
  • JR1427 2y ago
    Similarly, there was a time when my daughter got very car sick, and I desperately wanted an "avoid roundabouts" option!
  • leeoniya 2y ago
    or "fewest turns". i would rather drive an extra straight 0.25 miles down a major road than to zig-zag through tiny side streets while trying to carefully pay attention to unfamiliar street names and/or constant nav app directions. i've had google maps instruct me to take four or five additional turns to save a couple hundred yards of driving.
    • themk 2y ago
      Google maps is absolutely horrendous for this. I've found OsmAnd to give me much better results. But google maps traffic awareness is pretty handy...
    • jwilk 2y ago
      Or "fewer left turns". I can handle the right turns.
  • poloniculmov 2y ago
    Waze sort-of does this, it tries to keep you moving by taking lots of left turns and side streets. I hate it :).
  • sandworm101 2y ago
    Sportbike mode: route with least likelihood of speed traps, plus 1-minute warning ahead of known trap locations. No-selfies mode: route with least cellphone coverage. Horsebox mode: route with fewest intersections and the most sportbikes.
• exe34 2y ago
  I find Organic Maps to be less irritating, but it doesn't always find the address I search for - but once I've found the place and dropped a pin, it's much nicer to work with for walking and cycling.
• dataflow 2y ago
  > It doesn't let you avoid a road or favour another This might be a computational cost thing. Modern routing algorithms preprocess the graph to find the optimal route orders of magnitude faster than you normally would without preprocessing. If you let each person customize the graph then such queries would be much more costly. Then again, I'm sure there are lots of other complications already and that most users wouldn't want alternate routes, so maybe the marginal cost here is irrelevant?
  • codetrotter 2y ago
    Hire some game devs that have worked on path finding in AAA games. They will find a way to partially pre process the map data in such a way that on-device computation can then let the user pick and choose what roads to favor and what roads to exclude. And as an added bonus they’ll be unrelentingly optimizing your map application to the point where the UI will run at 144 Hz ;)
    • dataflow 2y ago
      Game routing is not remotely similar to real world routing. Neither in scale, nor in other aspects like road traffic or incorporation of human preferences. In any case, I'm not suggesting it's impossible, just costlier than people imagine when they ask for the feature.
    • PoignardAzur 2y ago
      > Hire some game devs that have worked on path finding in AAA games. I think you're seriously overestimating how many AAA games do any kind of fancy pathfinding beyond "just use A*".
      • codetrotter 2y ago
        Well. I’m not saying to unconditionally hire them. Ask them a few questions in the interview to see what specific kind of problems they’ve been solving :)
    • bazzargh 2y ago
• deleted 2y ago
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• arsome 2y ago
  Even when driving the best Google maps can do is avoid highways. OsmAnd is great but it doesn't solve the routing issue to my knowledge. If you know of something that solves that one please let me know.
• 12907835202 2y ago
  The biggest thing for me with maps is the refusal to allow multiple tabs on phone. If you're the passenger on a road trip and doing the navigation you're unable to use maps to make plans for tonight or tomorrow. Okay the driver could be nav, but now they also need to be the music, and everytime you the passenger wants to use it to look for petrol on route or change music you have to ask their code or hold it up to their face. Plus now you see all their notifications. Even without being on a road trip, on a desktop i'd be making plans in multiple tabs before making a decision. On a phone it's a nightmare when it could be so easy.
  • Retric 2y ago
    You can use multiple map apps at the same time on one phone. Default + website (on multiple tap) are always available, but on long road trips I use Waze. There’s also a bunch of really nice apps for things like subway maps, trails, etc.
    • tnel77 2y ago
      While you are correct, I think they were saying it would be nice to turn on Google Maps directions and then use the same app on the same phone to do research without disrupting the current navigation.
      • Retric 2y ago
        I regularly use Maps as an actual map not just a navigation system. I’d be nice if they included a topographic map view, etc but not every app needs to do everything at the same time. Many people have serious issues even with how stripped down everything is, so IMO as a default app loaded on every device it’s a decent compromise.
  • lupire 2y ago
    Install Maps Go for another map, and set up a Work Profile for 2 more maps. Or use Maps in abBrowser. Interestingly, when you have public transit navigation running, Maps is able to run "current trip" in background while you plan an alternate/additional trip.
• lupire 2y ago
  > It doesn't let you avoid a road or favour another. In the Directions mode, you can insert a map pin for a point you want to pass.
• stevage 2y ago
  I have put enormous effort into building routable cycling maps over the years: https://stevebennett.me/2015/01/14/cycletour-org-a-better-map-for-australian-cycle-tours/ https://stevebennett.me/2015/01/14/cycletour-org-a-better-ma... It's frustrating to me that after all these years, I still end up using Google Maps mostly. I haven't really come across a general purpose mapping tool I can use for cycling directions and routing, both on desktop and on my phone, in cities and in the bush.
• frederikvs 2y ago
  This is why I need to have 10 different map apps on my phone. I hate it. Google maps is good enough for find my way in a city, or getting to a destination by car. And when I get there, I whip out another app to pay the parking. If I forget where I parked, my car has an app with a map. To plan a longer trip with an electric car, ABRP is better. And when I'm just looking for a charge pole where my card will work, Plugsurfing. If I want to use car sharing, another app with another map. If I want to go for a run or a hike, outdooractive has some routes. Komoot has some others. But if I want to find some rock climbing routes, I need 27crags. Meanwhile, my sports watch also has a map which can show me the route I just ran. None of these are fundamentally different. All show a very similar map, just with other points of interest, other routes, other layers, other navigation algorithms. But all of these apps have different UI, different features, and just behave slightly differently. I wish I could just have a single map app, where I enable the layers I'm interested in.
  • btbuildem 2y ago
    I feel like if you had all the map apps in one, you'd end up with a Salesforce of maps. I kind of like having separate apps for different activities. For sure, it's nice that they integrate eg. gas station search into Waze -- it's a car-related thing, and a likely option in the workflow of navigating a trip. I'll use a totally different app for route finding along mountain trails - here I'll be concerned about offline availability, topography data, terrain types, shelters, precise location and orientation, etc. To OP's point, it would be nice to have a bike-centric app that responds to concerns cyclists have and others pay little attention to - eg, road surface quality, lane widths, grading, wind exposure, general safety rating etc. Google Maps does the token thing of indicating the total climb and descent for a planned route, but it doesn't give an option to optimize for that (eg, longer route with fewer climbs).
• mFixman 2y ago
  OsmAnd is great despite being so ugly, but for cycling I would should out Komoot. It's made for long touring rides, but it works perfectly for shorter rides within the city and its routing is produces routes that are faster, more pleasant, and overall much better than Google Maps.
• CrimsonRain 2y ago
  There's a certain (group of) employees/people in Google maps team which prevent things like this because of their self appointed social justice/we know better ego and they are actually proud of it. https://x.com/kaseyklimes/status/1802431551671603375?s=46 https://x.com/kaseyklimes/status/1802431551671603375?s=46
  • gjm11 2y ago
    The argument made there isn't about "things like this". To save everyone a click, here's a summary of that argument: you might want Google Maps to let you ask for the "nicest" rather than the "quickest" route; that would systematically tend to send you through the fancier higher-income parts of town, and in the case of walking directions the effect (which would happen across the entire world) would be to shift foot traffic, and hence e.g. custom for shops, from poorer parts of town to richer parts of town, and that would be bad. Now, for the avoidance of doubt, I think this is a silly argument for many reasons; here are a few of them. For walking directions through commercial parts of a city, practically everyone is going to choose "quickest" rather than "nicest" and they probably aren't going to stop in the shops along the way; for driving directions, moving traffic from poorer to richer parts is probably a net social-justice improvement; most people asking for "nicer" routes are probably more interested in e.g. avoiding major roads outside cities. (I do think it's reasonable to ask: what would be the consequences for the world if we offered this feature? and sometimes to conclude that it would make things worse. But I can't say I find it very easy to believe that companies like Google do in fact generally make their decisions on this basis, given what most of those decisions look like.) But, bad argument or not, and genuinely representative of how Google makes decisions or not, it isn't an argument for not letting people make more specific choices like "avoid this particular road" or "prefer this road when possible", nor for not showing cycle routes and hiking trails, nor for letting you keep the screen on without showing directions. It doesn't have anything to do with any of the things the grandparent comment was complaining that Google Maps doesn't let you do. I guess it's possible that Kasey in fact argues against all forms of user customization in Google Maps on the grounds that users might customize Maps in ways that are socially harmful. It's even possible that she does so and it makes a difference. But there's nothing in her tweets linked above to suggest that she does, and it doesn't seem plausible to me that considerations like hers have much to do with a broad lack of customizability in Google Maps.
• jameshart 2y ago
  I’m often struck by how poorly Google and Apple Maps work as substitutes for an atlas. They focus on roadways, and while they can show you the physical appearance of terrain, they do a poor job of putting names to both physical features - mountain ranges, rivers, valleys, seas and bays - as well as human names for regions. Apple Maps tries a little - I can zoom out over the US and occasionally it tries to write ‘Appalachian Mountains’ along the length of the range, for example - but it pops in and out as you zoom and scroll and actually getting a view where the whole name is visible is difficult. Sometimes it labels the ‘Gulf of Maine’. Sometimes it labels it ‘Fox Islands Thouroughfare’. Google maps as you zoom out just keeps showing the road networks with no hierarchy of importance (the interstate network doesn’t stand out from the dense grid at all) and at some level just labels states and countries. It has. Interest in labeling large scale geographical features at all. Try picking out a good view on one of these maps that lets you trace the course of the Mississippi River and pick out the major cities along the route. It’s just not something you can accomplish with these maps.
• deleted 2y ago
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• nonameiguess 2y ago
  My frustration with the state of mapping apps as a runner is endless. Almost always, I'm starting at my house and also ending at my house. Clearly, the shortest route, fastest route, route that avoids highways, whatever, is to never leave in the first place. I'm already there. That isn't the point. I just want to trace out all the different ways I can possibly go and measure them. I don't want the software to find a route for me at all. I can find it myself. I just want the software to record it and measure the distance, not the way "Map My Run" and what not do by recording where you actually go via GPS, but letting me do it on the map before running it. The stupidest thing is this would be so much computationally simpler than what they really do. They wouldn't need GPS or location services at all. They wouldn't need any feed of current route status. A paper map can do this with no computation at all. I'd just like to have it on my phone and not need a ruler and string to do the measurements. For the inevitable peanut gallery, I'm aware of browser-based web apps that can do this and I use them. I'm also aware of Apple/Google's "choose waypoints" or whatever feature, which does not do what I want because it still finds routes itself between the waypoints.