Forum Discussion

RedDragon's avatar
RedDragon
Resourceful Rider
2 months ago

Improve the Citi Bike Map

Problem: In the Citi Bike map (in the app) it is almost impossible to tell traffic flow direction for streets when browsing the map, an arguably important piece of information when biking in NYC. Similarly, reading street names is just as hard with them only appearing if you zoom in almost all the way!

The green bike lane lines cover the street arrows which indicate the direction of traffic (I've circled two arrows that are being covered). Also, only two street name labels are showing here:

Suggestions:

  1. Make it easier to see the traffic flow arrows by either making the direction arrows easier to see (change color, size, etc) or allow users to toggle the green bike lane overlay on the map on and off
  2. Make it easier to see/read street names and prioritize them over places of interest
  3. Add a toggle to show/hide places of interest on the map (restaurants, hotels, stores, etc)

Lastly, an argument against improving the current experience might be to user the "directions" feature which will give you a correct route but to that I say that sometimes we just want to do an ad-hoc bike ride. Secondly, bike angels (like me) would love to better see street names and traffic flow directions I don't really use the directions feature because there's no way to simply put a pin on the map or tap on a station as your start and end address; we must type in the address which is time-consuming.

  • Jess's avatar
    Jess
    Bike Angels Team

    Hi, RedDragonthank you for this post about opportunities to improve the mapping and directions/destination selection. This is super insightful, and I see other Angels agree with your thoughts on this. I shared this post with the Bike Angels Team yesterday to spark some conversations based directly on your feedback. Keep the feedback coming, and I'll keep plugging it in with our teams. 😊 I can't promise immediate results, but the more feedback we get the better we know what needs the most attention. 

  • SashaMetro's avatar
    SashaMetro
    Resourceful Rider

    All of these are excellent points, but may not be feasible to add without them switching the mapping library used in the app (based on the commercial names everywhere I’m pretty sure it’s using Google). Still it would be great if the Lyft app dev team could get someone to look at alternative libraries - could be a great intern project for next summer! Apple Maps have gotten a lot better over the years, if they have Android support it could be feasible.

    • RedDragon's avatar
      RedDragon
      Resourceful Rider

      The UI map elements mirror those of Google Maps but the underlying streets and paths are from OpenStreetMap.org. That said, the places of interest seem to be yoinked from Google. There is actually a tiny info button within the Citi Bike app at the bottom left that confirms use of LyftMap and OpenStreetMap so hopefully that means they're able to customize the features and overlays.