Biking Navigation in Google Maps Gets Half a Gig Meter Boost

If you are a rider who loves to jump on the bike and get ready for a trip, chances are you either already know the route or already tucked a paper map in your back pack. If that's event partly true, you are in for a good surprise or rather a gift from Google' Android team. Its time you forget the paper maps and not worry about getting lost on a trip to an unknown path. Its time you pull out your android device and plant it right in front of you on the bike. Your android device is turning itself to your route guide now as Google Maps for Android pushes out an update to the app that is supposed to add around half a giga meter of biking navigation and that too in 12 countries.

Google announced on Thursday that they are "bringing mobile biking directions and navigation" in the 10 countries that already had the option for desktop biking directions. These countries include Australia, Austria, Belgium, Denmark, Finland, the Netherlands, Norway, Sweden, Switzerland and the UK.

Apart from this the Google Maps Navigation (beta) gets a turn by turn voice guided biking navigation in all the countries that already have biking navigation. "Mount your device on your handlebars to see the turn-by-turn directions and navigation, or use speaker-mode to hear voice-guided directions" is what Larry Powelson(Software Engineer, Google Maps) posted on official Google blog. It was a couple of years back when Google added biking directions to Google maps in US and Canada. With this update there is now around 530K KMs of green biking lines in Google Maps.

Here is how the bike route reads:

• dark green lines on the map show dedicated bike trails and paths with no motor vehicles
• light green lines show streets with bike lanes
• dashed green lines show other streets recommended for cycling

So the next time you plan some time out with your bike, don't forget your android device and do share with us how it went !