The Chainlink

I'm making a bike routing web application

Hello Chainlink,

I'm brand new to Chainlink and a former long-distance cyclist who just last month bought his first bike in 20 years. I was (re)bitten by the bug hard enough to combine my love of cycling with what I do for a living; web programming.

Over the last month, after the kids go to bed, I've been building Velociped.es, a freely available bike routing web application for Chicago. It uses Google Maps bike routing, overlays Chicago bike lanes, and also locates CDOT bike racks near the end of each segment of the route.

To be honest, I've been writing this for myself; to learn new web design and coding skills, and to help me find my way around my city on a bike. But I think it may be to a point where someone else might find some use from it. I can see it useful for spying new routes in unfamiliar parts of the city, checking the distance of a certain route, or assisting someone not familiar with Chicago. Tired of that same old route to work every day? Find a new one.

For now, it is still in development at: http://dev.velociped.es/ . Its future permanent home will be http://velociped.es/. Use the "Help" button at the bottom of its page if you need tips on how to use Velociped.es.

Velociped.es is designed for desktop, laptop, tablet, or late model smartphones.

On a desktop or laptop, you can drag-and-drop your automated route if you want to tweak it. This not available on a phone or tablet. The act of detailed dragging and dropping on a touch screen is a frustrating experience for over 95% of the people I've seen try it; including me.

I hope you enjoy Velociped.es as much as I have building it. Comments are always welcome.

Cheers and Happy Summer.

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Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by Sarah D. on July 14, 2012 at 9:50am

How cool, Tom - I love the lock icons! Thank you for sharing. I will definitely check it out for routing!

Permalink Reply by Tom Kompare on July 22, 2012 at 2:08am

I've added a feature to Velociped.es:

Search for someplace in the vicinity of your route. Cafes, or bike repair shops, or whatever. Click on the "More" button and enter your search in the "Look for along the route" entry.

Velociped.es is a free Chicago bike routing web application designed for desktop, laptop, tablet, or smartphone.

Permalink Reply by Lisa Curcio on July 22, 2012 at 9:38am

Tom-

Quite nice!  Very nice to see the bike racks without having to go to the bike rack web site, and the drag and drop works very well, too.  Thank you for sharing!

Permalink Reply by Tom Kompare on July 22, 2012 at 11:10am


Lisa-

Thanks for the complement, and you're welcome! I'm hoping to make Velociped.es useful for others and not just myself. If you have any further comments or suggestions, please let me know. I am limited by the good graces of free tools on the internet, like Google Maps. I'm also limited by the fact I'm a coding army of one, after the kids go to bed. But there is a lot that still can be done, at least theoretically. :-)

Cheers and enjoy.

Permalink Reply by Julie Aberman (Hochstadter) on July 22, 2012 at 12:26pm

I like the colors.

Tom Kompare said:


Lisa-

Thanks for the complement, and you're welcome! I'm hoping to make Velociped.es useful for others and not just myself. If you have any further comments or suggestions, please let me know. I am limited by the good graces of free tools on the internet, like Google Maps. I'm also limited by the fact I'm a coding army of one, after the kids go to bed. But there is a lot that still can be done, at least theoretically. :-)

Cheers and enjoy.

Permalink Reply by Tom Kompare on July 30, 2012 at 10:24pm

I've made another small improvement to Velociped.es. You can click on the "Map" button next to each address input box (Start,Stop#1,Stop#2,Finish) and then click on the map to fill in its address.

I think this will be handy for someone who knows where they are and where they want to go, but is not familiar with exact addresses.

Let me know what you think. Comments, questions, complaints all welcome.

Cheers.

Permalink Reply by carl whetherspoon on July 31, 2012 at 8:54am

well done!  Would it be possible to link up multiple stops on a route? Instead of point A to B, Point A, B,C,D etc?

Permalink Reply by Tom Kompare on July 31, 2012 at 11:34am

Hi Carl

Thanks for the complement. You can click on the "More" button to enter one or two "stops along the way". You can also do a search for places in the vicinity of your route, such as "bike repair" or "cafe" or whatever.

What vicinity means is a little arbitrary; Google picks the first 20 places that match your search giving priority to ones close to your route.

Cheers.

carl whetherspoon said:

well done!  Would it be possible to link up multiple stops on a route? Instead of point A to B, Point A, B,C,D etc?

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