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by jld 1903 days ago
So they'll default to showing directions for biking, walking, and transit?
2 comments

A pet peeve of mine is that google maps doesn't show most transit routes on the map. There is a transit layer you can enable, but it only shows metro and light rail, not buses, brt, trams, ferries, etc.
This is a problem with GTFS. Firstly, that GTFS has separate enumerators for trains vs. buses, and only shows stuff that identifies itself as trains, but also because most agencies do not provide route shapes that are good enough to display. Often the routes run right down the centerlines of roads, cut through buildings at corners, etc. There would have to be a revolution in local government agency GIS quality control before it works right.
I feel like Google itself could probably clean up the route presentation, given their own understanding of the roads.
Technically it sounds feasible, but they'd want to avoid being accused of undermining the open data of the GTFS ecosystem.
My pet peeve is that there is no hybrid bike/transit routing option. If you choose transit, they assume you are pedestrian. Maybe the option is there and I just have not found it.
They started doing this in Tokyo with the latest rollout which included the Live view (about 2 months ago?). I was also aggressively peeved by it.
I believe Citymapper has the edge on multi-modal routing, at least if they support your city.
Citymapper at least tries, but is still bad for bike+public transport.

I look at the options that Citymapper gives and then have to recalculate the route, in my head, correcting for wrong decisions about where I'll have access to a bike.

(Yes, it'll be quicker if I cycle my own bike from my home to the nearest station. No, I won't be cycling a hire bike 111 minutes away from its closest docking port.)

At least for cars, it makes little sense because the dominant factor is going to be the time on the road, which they in theory have been trying to minimize already.

Any additional micro-optimizations are going to be fractional.

Unless of course they optimize for me not driving under a train bridge with my camper. That would be a big help. I wish they took into account the vehicle you are driving.
I've been looking at OSMAnd's nav settings while reading this thread, and they do indeed let you create a driving profile that includes vehicle dimensions and max speed!
Can you elaborate? I'm not sure I understood. I've never driven a camper.
I assume they mean the bridge clearance vs vehicle height. /r/11foot8 has some amusing examples.