Walking directions now on Google Maps

One of the best features on Google Maps is the ability to get directions from Point A to Point B. But as useful as it is when driving to a new city, it's not nearly as functional if you're trying to walk your way to a downtown lunch meeting in a maze of one-way streets.

Not any more! Google Maps recently released a beta service where they search out the best walking routes, ignoring one-way streets and even finding a route with as flat a topography as possible.

However, the service is not yet complete. From the Google Maps blog:

Walking directions work well for short trips in urban areas, but we don't always know if a street has a sidewalk, or if there's actually a special pedestrian bridge for crossing a busy street. There are still a lot of pedestrian pathways we don't know about, and they might save you some time if you find them. We're working on collecting new data on pedestrian pathways and on more effective ways to solicit your feedback, so that we can steadily improve this feature and get you where you need to be as efficiently as possible.

Little changes like this help us out of the mindset that The Car is the default mode of transportation. Good work to the folks at Google.