aka Tom Reingold
Join Date: Jan 2009
Location: New York, NY, and High Falls, NY, USA
Posts: 40,524
Bikes: 1962 Rudge Sports, 1971 Raleigh Super Course, 1971 Raleigh Pro Track, 1974 Raleigh International, 1975 Viscount Fixie, 1982 McLean, 1996 Lemond (Ti), 2002 Burley Zydeco tandem
Mentioned: 511 Post(s)
Tagged: 0 Thread(s)
Quoted: 7359 Post(s)
I'm not sure, but to me, it seems they estimate movement at 10 mph for cycling. I do a little better than that, so I beat those times. The exceptions are when it's a long ride and I need rests. Google doesn't expect you to rest, so in those cases, I do worse than the time estimate.
But with all of that said, I find it to be an excellent estimator of travel time, for cycling, walking, mass transit, and car driving. I use it for all of those modes.