Google earth

Combining the app's existing biking and mass transit directions could save people time while reducing emissions. A woman stands in silhouette in front of ...

One of the report’s recommendations is that the city formally request that both Google and Apple “add bicycle parking as a layer in their mapping applications,” given that plentiful digital tools exist to facilitate car parking and laws but no analog exists for bikes. I think there’s also a responsibility for city governments to build out that network, and then for Google Maps to route people on those protected bike lanes.” [transition to electric vehicles](https://www.protocol.com/climate/ev-charging-gas-stations) is underway, the vast majority of vehicles on the road are gas-powered and [will be for decades to come](https://www.protocol.com/newsletters/climate/senate-climate-bill-ev-tax). But making low- or zero-carbon transportation more appealing and easier to navigate could have an even larger impact on reducing emissions given the size of Google Map’s user base. “The fact that they have transit directions totally changes what people’s experiences of new cities are like,” Wells, who doesn’t own a car, said. Bikeshares are also seeing an uptick in usage; just last week, New York City’s CitiBike bike-share program [had its most rides ever](https://twitter.com/artandfox/status/1561724179656867840), averaging nearly 124,000 per day. Google did not reply to questions about the inconsistency of its multimodal directions, though a spokesperson did note that Amsterdam, Paris, Zurich, Madrid, Dublin, Tel Aviv and Boston are among cities with biking and transit options linked up — and that the company plans to keep expanding to other locations. And Google Maps is right there on everyone's phone.” Many daily commuters even take their bikes on the train, and use them for the first and last miles of their journey. However, it seems that the company has yet to prioritize combining these functionalities for its whole user base. But a trip across town can sometimes lead to a convoluted array of public transit transfers, a long walk or getting snarled in a traffic jam. While the