The rain showers and thunderstorms this weekend gave us the perfect excuse to stay indoors and work on the website. We've listed the major changes below.

Better error handling
Did any of you try to plan a bike route to Jersey City, Yonkers, or Nassau County? If you tried to get to any of these locations -- or to anywhere else that is not in our street network database -- you probably noticed a nasty bug that could only be bypassed with a page refresh. We now handle this exception and a few others more gracefully.

Printing
The site now prints a nice, clean set of turn-by-turn directions. As we mentioned earlier, getting the map to print properly is going to take a little more work.

More opportunities for feedback
We've added one more feedback form to the site. After you run a route, you'll have a chance to let us know exactly what you think of it. This lets us easily re-run the route to reproduce any problems you mention. It's important that you let us know what you would have done differently so we can adjust the underlying data.

Data cleanup
We've also been busy combing through your feedback to take your suggestions into account (and to fix errors in the map). Here are some of our recent changes:

  • We added a whole slew of connections from the Manhattan street grid to the East River Greenway. You should see it showing up in a lot more of your Manhattan routes.
  • We added the Bleecker Street bike lanes.
  • We added the south entrance to the Brooklyn-side of the Williamsburg Bridge and deleted an impossible shortcut to the north entrance.
  • We made it less likely that you'll be routed down Hamilton Ave in Brooklyn on the safest and safe options.
  • We made it more likely that you'll be routed down Vernon Blvd for north-south routes in western Queens.
  • We connected the Hudson River Greenway, the Battery Park City Greenway, Battery Park, and the East River Greenway for a (mostly) car-free Lower Manhattan circuit.
  • And much more...

As always, keep your suggestions coming! Especially if you bike in eastern Queens, the Bronx, and Staten Island, we could use your constructive feedback on the best streets for biking.