You know the moment. Someone drops a Google Maps link in the group chat, captioned “this is the loop we did on Sunday”, and it’s a perfectly good route. You want it in Party Onbici so you can run it as a ride, share it, and get proper cycling directions. So you squint at the map and start clicking points into the route builder one by one, hoping you’ve got the corners right.
Not anymore. You can now carry a Google Maps route into Party Onbici by editing one part of the address bar.
The trick: change the front, keep the back
A Google Maps directions link looks like this:
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Everything after the ? is the route itself: where it starts, where it goes, where it ends. So keep that part, and swap the beginning for our route builder.
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Open it, and the builder comes up with your start, your stops in order, and your finish already in place, with a proper cycling route drawn between them.
To be clear about what this is: it’s not a box you paste a link into. You’re editing the front of the URL and keeping the query string. It takes a few seconds, and it beats clicking twelve waypoints by hand.
What you can put in it
origin and destination are the two you need. Without both, there’s nothing to build.
waypoints is optional, and it’s where the good stuff lives. List your stops in order, separated by %7C (that’s just a URL-safe pipe character, and Google writes it that way already). You can pass up to 58 stops between your start and finish.
Coordinates or place names, your choice. -34.9285,138.6007 works, and so does Adelaide Railway Station. Mix them freely in the same link. We’ll look up the text ones and keep everything in the order you wrote it.
api and travelmode are simply ignored. They come along for the ride when you copy a Google link, and they do no harm. Party Onbici always routes as a bike, so there’s no travel mode to set.
Nothing gets saved until you say so
The link opens the builder. It doesn’t create anything. You land on the normal route creation page with the points filled in, free to drag a waypoint that’s landed awkwardly, add a stop, or change your mind entirely. A route only exists once you hit save.
And if something in the link doesn’t resolve, whether a typo’d coordinate or a place name we can’t find, you get an empty builder and a warning rather than a half-drawn route missing the stop you cared about. We’d rather tell you plainly than hand you something subtly wrong.
Where this comes in handy
- The group chat route. Someone shares Sunday’s loop; you turn it into a ride other people can join.
- Routes from anywhere else. Plenty of tools export Google Maps-style links. If it has an origin, a destination and waypoints, it comes across.
- Building from a list of places. Write the stops out as names (cafe, lookout, bakery, home) and let the geocoder do the clicking.
- Tweaking a route you already know. Start from the shape you have and adjust in the builder rather than starting from a blank map.
One thing to know
You’ll need to be signed in, because the route builder is your workspace. The link takes you to log in first and then straight on to your pre-filled route. It’s worth bookmarking your favourite loop as a link, though: open it any time and you’re one save away from a fresh ride.
Got a route sitting in a Google Maps link right now? Change google.com/maps/dir/ to www.partyonbici.com/routes/create/, hit enter, and see your ride appear. 🚲
New to Party Onbici? Download the app and find a ride near you, then start building your own.