Not Just Bikes — Why I don't use Google Maps in Amsterdam
nebula.tv
Google Maps is an application that is used by over two billion people every month. But as an application that is primarily designed by and for car drivers, it often fails in a human-sized city like Amsterdam.
  • Zagorath@feddit.nlOPMEnglish
    14·
    7 days ago

    To be honest, I find Google Maps pretty poor for cycling even in Australia. For some of the same reasons they’re bad in the Netherlands. A high tendency to send you on busier roads (though here that means actually dangerous, rather than just a bit uncomfortable and noisy), and not really understanding the difference between an on-road bike lane, a dedicated bike path, and a quieter bike-friendly street.

      • Zagorath@feddit.nlOPMEnglish
        1·
        6 days ago

        My go-to is Ride With GPS. It gives you the ability to do manual routing if you want it, and frankly I usually do use that, but its defaults are a lot better than Google.

        • artyom@piefed.socialEnglish
          2·
          6 days ago

          Yeah I’ve used them as well and the automatic routing is not so good. I can put 2 points 3 feet from each other and it will route them around a 2 mile detour randomly.

          I use my self-hosted Wanderer now.

          • Zagorath@feddit.nlOPMEnglish
            1·
            6 days ago

            I can put 2 points 3 feet from each other and it will route them around a 2 mile detour randomly

            I had that happen to me with Google Maps walking directions recently. I worked out pretty confidently that the reason was because Google thought it was a one-way path, because the detour would stop happening if I swapped the start and end locations.

            • artyom@piefed.socialEnglish
              1·
              6 days ago

              Google thought it was a one-way path

              Is there even such a thing as a 1-way walking path?

    • JillyB@beehaw.org
      4·
      7 days ago

      Gmaps also seems to think I ride like a grandmother and so the eta is always way off.

  • lemmysmash@beehaw.org
    31·
    6 days ago

    GMaps is horrible not only as a service that forces you to enable all their spyware technologies or lose most of the functionality, not only it’s hostile to any other mapping applications and makes it literally impossible to even copy the coordinates (I’m not even talking about converting links or using geo-uri’s), but even within itself it’s absolutely horrible for any non-car activity: hiking, walking, cycling, running, commuting — the UX of all that is absolutely abysmal.

    So if you find a solution that works for you without GMaps (and preferably the one that contributes back to something like OSM), good for you, stick to that solution a forget that absolute garbage produced by Google.