Beware of Bogus Bike Lanes on Google Maps

I'll  admit that I was more than a little surprised to see on Google Maps that Indy's Kessler Boulevard supposedly has a "dedicated bike lane" running between Allisonville Road and Michigan Road. It was really surprising given that I had driven that stretch as far as College just the day before and remarked to my S.O. that this was a classic Indy surface street: fast traffic on narrow lanes without even a hint of a shoulder. 

A little more map browsing showed that there were other recent additions to the bicycle layer of the map service that are, to be frank, questionable. For instance, someone claims that there is a dedicated lane for bikes along 46th Street from the Butler U. campus to where the street meets German Church Road in Lawrence. Some of that's real (College to about Emerson), but I rode the stretch west of Meridian just last week, and there's definitely no bike lane; nor is there anything east of I-465. 

A disturbing new "feature" was the notation that the ramp from southbound I-69 to eastbound I-465 (near Castleton) was marked as "bicycle-friendly." I managed to get that one deleted by reminding Google that federal law prohibits non-motorized vehicles on interstates¹ – not that most people are stupid enough to think it was real. But as for sending people to ride along Kessler? Scary.

Family members also tell me that the long stretch of Troy Avenue west of Beech Grove, like Kessler, has no dedicated bike lane. Clearly, someone out there thinks it's funny... it's not, much the same way that "rolling coal" isn't funny.

I reported Kessler to Google at the same time as the freeway on-ramp, but have had no answer. I also reached out to Indy Bicycle/Pedestrian Coordinator, to let him know of the phenomenon. There's no published way to contact him, so I sent him a Facebook Message and got an answer a few days later.

¹ For those of you who aren't aware, you can report "missing" information for a street to Google Maps by clicking the "send feedback" link in the bottom right of the screen; obviously the map crew will take your word for it... even when the service's street view function shows the report to be utterly fake.

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