Go for a Google Maps walk
Posted by Jacque on July 23rd, 2008
Another new feature for Google Maps: get walking directions for fairly short trips and Google Maps will try to find you a route that’s direct, flat, and uses pedestrian pathways when they know about them.
The app is in Beta since there are naturally some unknowns, such as whether sidewalks or pedestrian bridges are available. You are reminded to use caution. But there is an advantage in many places because driving directions will attempt to guide you the right way when one-way streets exist. That is a factor that walkers don’t need to consider.
Google Operating System Blog offers this tip: if you only see driving directions, copy the permalink of the page by clicking on “Link to this page”, append &dirflg=w and paste the new URL in the address bar.
Directions can be printed, emailed, bookmarked or embedded in a site. You can also save them as a custom map, just click on “Link to this page”, copy the link, add &output=kml at the end and then create a new map in the My Maps tab by importing the KML file.
