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The Schuylkill River Trail could get Google Street View treatment.

The popular recreational trail has been nominated as a finalist for Google’s Street View Trike competition, according to the Bicycle Coalition of Greater Philadelphia.

The Schuylkill is among 24 finalists that were voted on from a pool of 25,000. If it beats four others in the parks and trails category, Google would photograph the trail for its Street View map service.

The Coalition is asking locals to vote for Schuykill against competition like D.C.’s Capital Crescent Trail and others. A win could raise the Schuylkill’s national profile, the organization says, which could give BCGP political clout to help complete the trail’s development. Avid bike advocates that we are at Technically Philly, we’re going to take our journalist caps off for a moment and urge you to keep it local.

Both the river trail and the Street View trike have a history with the local technology community.

In July, software developer Jon Bringhurst created Trail Reporter to track crime along the well-populated bike trail, as we reported. In June, Technically Philly was the first to confirm that a Street View tricycle was roaming Penn’s campus. Google spokesperson Sean Carlson could not confirm with us then whether or not the trike would photograph Philly’s bike paths and off-road trails, but it’s suddenly become a real possibility.

Princeton University was also nominated and is in the running for the competition’s campus category. Voting ends November 30.

Photo courtesty of Scott Spitzer of scottspitzer.com.

Put on your Sunday’s best and quickly plan a practical joke to be forever immortalized online; Google Street View is back in town. On Penn’s campus, at least.

Earlier today we reported that a Technically Philly reader spotted a Google Street View tricycle roaming the University of Pennsylvania campus Wednesday, and now we have confirmation from Google and the first reader photo.

This afternoon, a spokesperson for Google said that Street View has been peddling around the UPenn campus during the past few days in a promotional partnership that provides the search giant with access to Penn’s private walks.

“[We're partnering] with universities and colleges who say ‘this is a great chance to explore our campus in a different way,’” Sean Carlson, Google’s manager of global communications and public affairs, told Technically Philly in a telephone interview.

Carlson says that Google has recently partnered with San Diego State, University of San Diego and Penn State for similar opportunities.

Penn web designer Scott Spitzer was walking on the Ivy League’s campus earlier today when he spotted the unusual looking vehicle and snapped several photographs, one of which is pictured above. Spitzer told Technically Philly in an e-mail that representatives from Google answered questions as they rested near the trike. He was told that the Street View tricycles ride anywhere from one to 25 miles per day.

Carlson couldn’t confirm that the trikes would photograph Philly’s many street bike paths and off-road trails, but Google has been taking the well-equipped tricycle on public trails throughout Europe and in the U.S., as reported by USA Today.

Philadelphia was one of the first 15 cities in the world in which Street View was made available, five months after Street View was debuted as a feature for Google Maps globally.

There’s no word on when Penn’s Street View images will go live.

Image courtesy of CNet UK

At first glance, it seems that the Google Street View team is either trying to save the environment or dying to shed some pounds.

On Wednesday, a clearly-marked Google Street View tricycle was spotted heading East on Locust Walk through the University of Pennsylvania campus on the pedestrian bridge that crosses 38th street, according to reader Nick Sillik, a freelance Web and mobile developer.

“The group of college girls in front of me definitely recognized what it was and started dancing for it,” he wrote Technically Philly in an e-mail.

Sillik says he didn’t have a chance to snap a photograph, but says that the bike had the all the markings of the Google “Trike” (pictured above) that’s been making headlines.

The complicated-looking contraption is set on three wheels and houses a GPS and a three-dimensional setup of high-resolution cameras similar to the Google Street View cars that passed through our streets in 2007, according to a Google press release.

The camera setup snaps shots and geo-tags the photographs so users can have a street-level view of where they are going on Google Maps. The bikes were developed so Google could provide off-road access to landmarks, biking paths and places you just can’t park a car.

So far, only a bike trail in Monterey, California is live on Street View, but we have our fingers crossed that we’ll soon be seeing some Philly landmarks up-close.

Image courtesy of CNet UK.