A while back I read on Bike Portland about GMap Pedometer, a free site that allows you to map out bike (or running) routes and make calculations on distances and calories burned using the Google Maps API. The site allows you to save routes as well, and will give you a static URL for each route, so that you can email them, post them to your blog, etc.

Bikely takes this idea one step further, by allowing registered users to create routes and then make them public, and provides an easy geographical search method. I was able to register on the site, search for Tucson bike routes and find 10-15 routes around town within five minutes. You can create your own routes in the same way as gmap-pedometer, but the bikely maps include elevation gain/loss data and have an easier to use interface. I was even able to import the routes I had created in gmaps-pedometer using the cool GPX export utility GMapToGPX. For example, check out this route from our neighborhood over to Agua Caliente State Park.

Bikely even has a sister site, MotoWhere for motorcyclists. I imagine that this could be used to help those who commute on scooters and the like to find car safe routes.

 

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