Long ago, Google Maps was no longer a mapping application and was guided to become a comprehensive guide to the city routes. We can find recommendations for restaurants, hotels, trips … And very useful local services, like all those related to public transport. Now Maps includes bike rental stations, not just the metro, train, and bus.
In addition to all the information about the streets, areas of interest, nearby restaurants and how these places are on the outside, thanks to Street View, now we will know instantly how many bicycles are free in a station and without the need to use the own applications of services as Bicing or BiciMAD. It is already available in the latest map update.
Google Maps adds information on bike stations in 23 cities around the world
Station information was available in tests in New York; where Google checked the feasibility and that the operation was correct. Now it expands to 23 cities in the world : Berlin, Brussels, Budapest, Chicago, Dublin, Hamburg, Helsinki, Kaohsiung, London, Los Angeles, Lyon, Madrid, Mexico City, Montreal, New Taipei, Rio de Janeiro, San Francisco Bay Area, São Paulo, Toronto, Vienna, Warsaw and Zurich.
The idea behind this feature is that the user of public bicycle rental services not only knows where the nearest station is located, it will also have the number of anchors that the station has and how many bicycles are left to use. In this way there is no reason to use an application other than Google Maps since we will have all the information with a simple search and the guided walk to the concrete station, of course.
The novelty is already included in Google Maps: you do not have to do anything, not even update your application. By our tests it works perfectly: just search the specific rental services for Maps to locate the stations on the map with all the bikes to be removed. This information should be as accurate as of the one included in official apps.
