Cycling Made Safer: Google Maps Now Includes All East Palo Alto Bike Lanes

Today we got 8 miles of bike lanes added to Google Maps after submitting it almost 12 months ago in February 2024. These align with bike lanes added during the Annual Street Resurfacing Project 21/22, which I wrote about in this previous blog post:

On the left in Fig 1, in January 2024 Google Maps did not reflect bike lanes of bike lanes on many East Palo Alto roads:

• Bay Rd
• Clarke Ave
• Pulgas Ave
• Cooley Ave
• O'Connor St
• East Bayshore Rd
• Newell Rd
• Capitol Ave
• West Bayshore Rd
• Woodland Ave

Google Maps also incorrectly classified bike lanes on some streets such as Fordham St.

My purpose of writing this post is to share the positive impact of this change and to share information on how this was done.

Credit

First, I want to credit Tai Michaels, former City of East Palo Alto sustainability coordinator, with gathering the bike lanes that were missing from Google Maps and creating a shapefile which he submitted through Google's Maps Content Partners. Before Tai worked on this, I do not think that the City of East Palo Alto had an account. Now, the City's public works department has access to the portal to submit future changes.

Impact

Any East Palo Alto resident who wants biking directions can now get Google Maps biking routes that prioritize usage of bike lanes. Before these bike lanes were added, Google Maps may have routed cyclists along major roads or side streets that did not have bike lanes. After bike lanes were added, Google Maps prioritizes roads with dedicated bike lanes, even if they are slightly longer, for safer and smoother rides. Moreover, Google Maps favors separated or protected bike lanes (Class I or II) over shared lanes (Class III).

These changes will also encourage more biking, which creates a positive upward cycle. More cyclists on a new bike lane may lead to higher preference in routing over time, which also means that more car drivers will be aware of the existence of bikes, which may lead to lower rates of collisions.

The new Google Maps bike lane information also benefits residents of adjacent cities who may bike through East Palo Alto to get to the San Francisco Bay Trail. For instance, Palo Alto residents will now be routed over the Newell Bridge and Clarke Ave overcrossing to reach Clarke and then O'Connor St. Before this Google Maps change, navigation may have taken cyclists all the way around to the Embarcadero pedestrian bridge. Due to previously inconvenient routing, cyclists may have decided not to bike through East Palo Alto, or they may have been routed on subpar routes which would dissuade them from biking through East Palo Alto.

How This Was Done

Google's Maps Content Partners documentation has information on how to submit "Bicycle facilities." Tai had created a Shapefile (.shp) with all of the various bicycle segments, along with their bike lane class (I, II, III, or IV). The fields/attributes did not exactly match, and Google was able to process them accordingly.

The shapefile .zip folder was submitted to Maps Content Partners (Fig 2). The bike lanes are all public knowledge and follow East Palo Alto's Bicycle Master Plan, so I am attaching the .zip folder submission here. You can view this data using the open-source QGIS software.

Fig 3. shows what the submission data looked like. Some of these bike lanes may have existed already, but the majority of the bike segments submitted were not in Google Maps before.

Future Submissions

This year, East Palo Alto will be adding more bike lanes as part of the Annual Street Resurfacing Project 2025, and the City will need to make a new submission to Maps Content Partners. If you find any bike lanes that are missing from Google Maps that exist in real-life in East Palo Alto, please contact engineering@cityofepa.org or comment below and I can forward the information along.