In October 2022, New York City officials unveiled a revolutionary bike lane on Schermerhorn street, a notoriously dangerous and congested roadway in downtown Brooklyn that I had always avoided while biking. To my surprise, my Apple Maps app directed me to take the new Schermerhorn bike lane instead of navigating through heavy traffic on Dean Street. As I made my way back, I noticed that the bike lane was bustling with cyclists.
The fact that Apple Maps was aware of the newly opened bike lane meant that the company had received updates from the Adams administration, as well as numerous other city governments across the globe. How was Apple able to accomplish this? It turns out, it was a massive undertaking involving data collection and meticulous attention to detail.
Eddy Cue, Apple’s senior vice-president of services, explained, “Introducing cycling on Apple Maps required significant effort. We wanted to ensure that cyclists are not put in a difficult position by directing them to unsafe routes. So, we provided cyclists with the option to avoid heavy traffic roads and choose bike-friendly routes. Creating a comprehensive cycling map involves substantial effort and attention to detail.”
Apple Maps’ transformation may surprise those who remember its disastrous launch in 2012, which was widely regarded as the company’s “first significant failure in years”. Users were not only frustrated, but also found themselves lost, sometimes in dangerous situations. For instance, Maps mistakenly placed the city of Mildura in Australia’s Murray-Sunset national park, causing tourists to become stranded without essentials like food and water. Another incident involved a cafe and gardens being designated as an actual airport.
Since then, Apple has invested substantial resources into improving Maps. They have dispatched teams across the globe, utilizing various methods such as camera-equipped vans, bikes, and foot patrols to collect data in areas where aerial mapping technology falls short.
During my conversations with Apple engineers, they revealed that Maps’ progress was not solely reliant on data from city officials. They also incorporated feedback from riders themselves. By analyzing cycling patterns and identifying areas with a significant increase in cyclists, Apple could send personnel to investigate whether new bike paths were being used before they were officially documented by the government.
These techniques have enabled Apple Maps to become a strong competitor to Waze and Google Maps, particularly in terms of cycling and public transit navigation. The level of detail and accuracy provided by Apple Maps has made it an excellent resource for cyclists, even those who may feel anxious about biking through a city. Eddy Cue proudly asserts that it is the best cycling map available worldwide.
Cycling plays a crucial role in mitigating climate change, offering a cheaper, healthier, and often faster alternative to driving. Opting for a bike over a car even once a day can reduce an individual’s transportation-related carbon emissions by approximately 67%. However, many people are hesitant to cycle due to safety concerns. Although cities like London, Paris, and New York have made efforts to improve cycling infrastructure, it remains challenging to navigate the safest routes without an intricate knowledge of a city’s streets. Often, new developments like closed streets or newly constructed bike lanes go unnoticed by cyclists for months.
Fortunately, with the help of Siri and a trusty earbud, Apple Maps can guide cyclists through foreign cities, directing them toward bike lanes and safer routes, even when faced with complex one-way systems. While not flawless, Apple Maps still has room for improvement. For example, the cycling instructions in New York don’t accurately account for bus lane times, causing users to be directed down congested streets rather than utilizing nearby cycle paths. Similarly, in London, it occasionally suggests dark and potentially hazardous paths through woods and reservoirs instead of faster and mostly empty streets at night. The engineers at Apple explained that the routes are determined based on a points-based algorithm that considers factors such as speed, traffic, distances, and hills. Over time, the algorithm can be refined to consider additional factors, leading to even more accurate routing.
The introduction of such algorithms is a significant advancement that would have been unimaginable to mapmakers even just a few decades ago. These advancements are having a tangible impact on our world, as evident in the transformation of our navigation tools. It’s a far cry from the days when maps were static and required viewers to decipher their location based on street names and landmarks. The arrival of the little blue dot, constantly updating our position on our smartphones, has revolutionized our understanding of the world and our place within it. Now, maps adapt to us instead of the other way around. Our perspective can shift, and the world rotates around us. Hiking apps like AllTrails take it even further, drawing a line to indicate our path as we walk in real time.
While these tools have become ingrained in our daily lives, they have also posed challenges. We have become overly reliant on our maps, leading to a decline in our innate sense of direction. Some studies suggest that individuals who heavily rely on GPS have a smaller hippocampus, the part of the brain associated with spatial navigation. However, there are still aspects that the blue dot cannot capture. Is the seemingly short walk to work actually a strenuous uphill climb? Can you go jogging through the woods on your vacation, or are there potential dangers that the map doesn’t reveal?
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