A brand-new version of Metro’s venerable Bike There! map is set for release in the next few days. According to sources, the new map should be available ($6) at tomorrow’s Lloyd District Bike to Work Day event and will be available at local retailers by the weekend.
Mark Bosworth in Metro’s Geographic Information Systems department says the new map includes 17 miles of new, striped bike lanes and nearly 20 miles of new off-street bike and pedestrian paths which are not on the current version (last printed in 2005).
Other new features of the map are special markings for bicycle boulevards (they’ll be green with a black outline), and a new color for caution areas. Nine new bike shops have also been added to the list in the map’s resource section.
Bosworth says that much of the updates for this new version came in from bike planners throughout the region, and were coordinated by John Mermin at Metro. The Cartography was done by Matthew Hampton.
If you use the ByCycle Trip Planner, you’ve already seen these updates. Bosworth says Metro has developed a data workflow that pushes the updates directly to ByCycle founder Wyatt Baldwin and he posts them on the Trip Planner as soon as he gets them.
This is being called the 25th Anniversary Edition and the first Bike There! map was printed in 1983. I’d love to compare that map to this new one!
[Editor’s note: My initial version of this story included a photo and references to the role of map expert and volunteer Jack Newlevant. While Newlevant did compile some data for the map, I have since learned his role was more minor than I originally assumed and I decided to edit the story accordingly.]