Google maps correction!

[juldea]

My "problem report" to Google Maps, which suggested bikers go up Walnut Street in Somerville -- one of the largest hills in the city -- has finally resulted in a direction change. Requesting biking directions from Harvard to Winter Hill no longer goes up Walnut. Hooray!

Of course, this doesn't avoid the fact that it's hard, perhaps impossible, to avoid going uphill at all in that route. Still, I think Walnut is demonstrably wrong.

Comments

[ron_newman]

What route do you prefer (or at least find minimally painful) for this ride?

[juldea.livejournal.com]

Well, I only tried the ride a few times in summer before the weather got too cold for me to ride. I'm fairly untrained in riding and very sensitive to weather, so that happened quickly.

A route I tried a few times and almost found reasonable enough to do daily is just to go the long way 'round: east from Winter Hill on Broadway across McGrath, south on Cross and Tufts to Washington, then Washington west across town to Harvard Square. It's a longer but less hilly ride.

It's also reasonable to come down Cedar and cross Somerville Ave to get onto Oxford, but I live on the east side of Winter Hill and so would have to tackle getting around the hill to get to Cedar.

There's ways to do it more directly and try to zig-zag up side streets so as to not take the hills entirely in one go, but that would be easier to do if we didn't follow direction of traffic. I try to be a good cyclist and do so (and stop at red lights), so those routes are difficult.

I would love to get a good-quality topographical map of the city with roads laid over it so as to measure these things. There are some map options online, but nothing that's very easy to use.