Google Maps Gets Improved Street-Level Details In Four Major Cities

Google Maps has been quietly updated to include much more detailed street-level information for a handful of key cities around the world.

By zooming in, Google Maps for central London, Tokyo, San Francisco and New York now benefit from shapes and widths that more closely match the scale of roads.

At the same time, improved graphic representations of sidewalks, crosswalks, pedestrian islands and street flora have also been added, which should help users who rely on maps for walking routes.

Finally, parks now display the actual width of trails in dark green and stairs in gray, providing better accessibility information for wheelchair users or people with strollers.

Some of the improvements are undoubtedly subtle, but underscore Google’s commitment to improving city-wide coverage. The changes are server-side and therefore don’t require any software updates, and Google says it plans to expand the new details to other cities in the future.

Google Maps can be downloaded for free from the App Store. [Direct Link]

(Via AndroidPolice.)