Apple Maps’ new bike-route feature is off to a terrible start

Apple Maps is getting a new bike-route feature in iOS 14, and, if Monday’s WWDC presentation is any indication, it still has a long way to go. 

That brutal truth was communicated loud and clear when Apple Maps Product Design Director Meg Frost demoed the “dedicated cycling feature.” 

Unfortunately, the suggested routes were absolute hot trash. 

Specifically, Frost showed how Apple Maps would instruct a cyclist to ride from around 17th and Dolores Street in San Francisco’s Mission District to Baker Beach. As someone who has lived and cycled in San Francisco since 2008, both for commuting and pleasure (including many rides to Baker Beach), I can definitively tell you that the three routes suggested by Apple betray a fundamental lack of understanding of the reality of riding a bike in San Francisco. 

San Francisco is famous for many things and many reasons, but one of the most obvious is the hills. While obviously some neighborhoods are hillier than others, there are just certain streets you do not ride unless you specifically need to reach a destination on that block. In fact, there are even entire bike routes dedicated to zig-zagging between hills in order to get from one side of the city to the other with the least climbing possible. 

One such route, dubbed the Wiggle, plays a crucial role in biking from the Mission District to Baker beach. If you were to ask pretty much any cyclist in the city how to get from 17th and Dolores to Baker Beach, they would without a doubt tell you something along the lines of the following: Ride 17th to Sanchez, take Sanchez across Market to Duboce Park, ride the Wiggle to Fell and then through the Panhandle, connect to JFK and continue through the park to 25th Ave, and then take 25th all the way to Camino Del Mar. 

In a city with this many hills, and not enough bike lanes, there often aren’t many routes for people riding bikes — there is just one. Not realizing this truth is a painful mistake that new San Francisco cyclists only make once. 

Google Maps almost gets this theoretical beach ride right, but even the two mistakes it makes can be forgiven as they demonstrate an awareness of the changing nature of the city. Google Maps tells a cyclist to avoid the Panhandle and ride Page Street instead, for example, because of San Francisco’s Slow Streets Program that seeks to calm traffic during the pandemic and create more room for pedestrians, cyclists, and joggers. 

The cycling routes suggested by Apple Maps in Monday’s WWDC infomercial, on the other hand, not only do not include the most efficient route, but they are straight-up bad. Like, seriously, do not follow those. 

And sure, it’s worth noting that the new Apple Maps feature hasn’t been released yet and the terrible route demoed on Monday might be fixed by the time iOS 14 is dropped. Still, if Apple can’t get something like this right for the city where many of its engineers live and bike, it strains credulity that it won’t make worse bike-route mistakes in places more far flung. 

“We’ve built an incredible cycling experience that helps you get around town on your bike,” insisted Frost despite obvious evidence to the contrary. 

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While Apple Maps may one day, even one day soon, offer incredible directions for cyclists, it is clearly not off to a great start. But hey, whether you’re a brand-new cyclist just starting to get a feel for the city or a maps program run by one of the most well-capitalized companies in the entire world, we all have to start somewhere.