Google Maps has a driving directions page that already tops all the others. After all, after you enter your starting and ending addresses, you already can click the option: "Take Public Transit," and it will give you several options--even calculating the price of driving vs. the price of riding!

However, 30,176 people have signed a petition for Google to add a "Bike There" feature to their maps as well. There is already a third-party site, byCycle.org (screenshot pictured), for those of us in Portland, Oregon, and Madison, Wisconsin, that allows us to find safer bike routes instead of finding ourselves stranded at say, the intersection of a tiny, no-light, surface street and four-laned street. However, the petition is aimed at getting Google to include such information directly into their driving directions, much as they have the public transit option.

Using byCycle.org has encouraged me to use my bicycle more, especially when I am pulling Selah behind me in the trailer and don't want to take her life into my hands by ending up somewhere unsafe. This site also tells me exactly how far I will need to bike, and feel more confident about timing my rides and not getting myself in over my head. I believe if at least most metropolitan regions had such a site, it would greatly add to the number of people willing to bike, therefore making all of us healthier and greatly reducing the number of cars on the road.

If you are interested, the petition to Google can be found here. And while you are at it, consider donating to or helping out byCycle.org--they are a great cause, and further expansion has been put on hold for lack of resources. For more information, or to volunteer for ByCycle, email wyatt@bycycle.org.