Like so many of us, John Ewing used to take his car for granted. As news of climate change increased, however, he made a personal commitment to switch to walking, biking, and using public transit whenever possible. In 2008, Ewing began commuting by bicycle from North Berkeley to his job in Hayward as a pilot and flight instructor, averaging more than 6,000 miles per year.

“When I gave up driving, I realized that the maps we access using our computers and smart devices offer a vast amount of imagery for streets and highways, but almost nothing for non-car infrastructure,” Ewing says. He began recording on-the-ground 360-degree videos of walking and bicycling facilities in the East Bay and uploading them to Google Maps Street View; to date, he’s submitted nearly 100 miles of trails with about 250,000 views. His hope is that, by being able to see the actual appearance of these trails and paths, more people will choose to experience the world around them on foot or by bicycle.

In October 2023, Ewing became semi-retired and began videoing Berkeley’s paths and stairways using a GoPro Max 360 camera mounted to a heavy-duty selfie stick secured to a backpack. The camera records video with GPS coordinates onto a 256 gigabyte SD card, which can hold several hours of video. GoPro has a convenient iPhone app that allows you to start, stop, and monitor the camera while walking or cycling.

While the BPWA website provides links to Google Maps for its paths, the street views are still being processed by Google. Ewing started with paths in the northern areas and will be working his way south. Stay tuned for this added feature!

“My goal is to provide imagery of non-car infrastructure in an open-source manner to anyone interested in exploring areas outside of their car,” he says. “I’d love to encourage people to become aware of, use, and enjoy all the neighborhood pathways in Berkeley.”

Here’s a link to Ewing’s map of the paths he’s documented. Those depicted in green have been successfully processed by Google. Orange paths have not yet been videoed or are still being processed by Google.

If you want to contribute to this ambitious effort, John Ewing would love your help! You can contact him at jrewing@mac.com.