An ingenious vintage German cycle map (2014)
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An ingenious vintage German cycle map (2014)
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Re: An ingenious vintage German cycle map (2014)
#2I'm curious to see an SF version, though I wonder how you would sufficiently render such a dense and hilly city in this perspective.
Re: An ingenious vintage German cycle map (2014)
#3ohhhhh.... I'd want that in my osmand for the biking and hiking modes... :)
Re: An ingenious vintage German cycle map (2014)
#4I'm a big fan of this sort of everyday practical data visualization! To anyone who hasn't already seen this feature: when you select walking or biking directions on Google Maps, it renders a line in the sidebar to show you elevation change over the route. You can mouse over positions on that line, (or over the route line on the map) and it will render an indicator on the other line.
In this example, the elevation trace reveals a very steep section on Gregory Canyon Rd, between Baseline Rd and Flagstaff Rd:
Re: An ingenious vintage German cycle map (2014)
#5I have family living in a vilage shown in the snapshot of the map. It's deep black forest so, while I think displaying the steepness is a neat idea, there, you just know that over the mountain is steep, and if you want to avoid it, you stay in the valley :)
Re: An ingenious vintage German cycle map (2014)
#6I'm a big fan of this sort of everyday practical data visualization! To anyone who hasn't already seen this feature: when you select walking or biking directions on Google Maps, it renders a line in the sidebar to show you elevation change over the route. You can mouse over positions on that line, (or over the route line on the map) and it will render an indicator on the other line. In this example, the elevation tra…
Meh. Not to be a debbie downer, but that's the most basic courtesy you can offer to cyclists, and even that isn't telling half the story. In central Europe anyway, Google Maps is unusable for creating cycling tracks or directions.
There are much better alternatives, such as komoot or Strava or GPSies (I'm not affiliated.)
As important as (and sometimes more important than) the profile in a section is the gradient. The Google map doesn't tell me if there's going to be a 10% or 20% piece, and I can't glean it from the curve, because depending on the length of the track, the relations change.
Additionally, it's very important to know what kind of road you're on, and what kind of surface that road has. The thing only Google could do here, and doesn't, is to tell me how busy (with cars) the roads are and offer me a way around busy roads. Komoot at least shows me the type of road or street and its surface.
See this: https://imgur.com/a/j20XOmi (from komoot.)
the hill in the middle looks scary, but the line along its ridge tells me the gradient isn't steep. Yellow is 8% (it tells you on hover). It tells me what percentage (and where) the road is a bike road, or larger road, etc.
Strava on the other hand has heat maps: https://www.strava.com/heatmap which tell you where local cyclists like to go. One caveat is that it shows you where local road cyclists and mountain bikers like to go. Those folks can have vastly different understanding of what viable road conditions are from each other, and from you.
Unfortunately, planning cycling tracks is still a chore, and getting it wrong can be dangerous or at least unpleasant. The market is there, but it's nowhere near as huge as for cars.
Re: An ingenious vintage German cycle map (2014)
#7I'm a big fan of this sort of everyday practical data visualization! To anyone who hasn't already seen this feature: when you select walking or biking directions on Google Maps, it renders a line in the sidebar to show you elevation change over the route. You can mouse over positions on that line, (or over the route line on the map) and it will render an indicator on the other line. In this example, the elevation tra…
Meh. Not to be a debbie downer, but that's the most basic courtesy you can offer to cyclists, and even that isn't telling half the story. In central Europe anyway, Google Maps is unusable for creating cycling tracks or directions. There are much better alternatives, such as komoot or Strava or GPSies (I'm not affiliated.) As important as (and sometimes more important than) the profile in a section is the gradient . T…
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Re: An ingenious vintage German cycle map (2014)
#8I have family living in a vilage shown in the snapshot of the map. It's deep black forest so, while I think displaying the steepness is a neat idea, there, you just know that over the mountain is steep, and if you want to avoid it, you stay in the valley :)
hehe. I’m from there too.
Re: An ingenious vintage German cycle map (2014)
#9I'm a big fan of this sort of everyday practical data visualization! To anyone who hasn't already seen this feature: when you select walking or biking directions on Google Maps, it renders a line in the sidebar to show you elevation change over the route. You can mouse over positions on that line, (or over the route line on the map) and it will render an indicator on the other line. In this example, the elevation tra…
Meh. Not to be a debbie downer, but that's the most basic courtesy you can offer to cyclists, and even that isn't telling half the story. In central Europe anyway, Google Maps is unusable for creating cycling tracks or directions. There are much better alternatives, such as komoot or Strava or GPSies (I'm not affiliated.) As important as (and sometimes more important than) the profile in a section is the gradient . T…
(I'm the author of the 2014 article posted here - really pleasant surprise to see it surface on HN.)
Fully agree with your comments. It's not just Google that can tell you about busy roads, though - in some countries that's available as open data.
I run https://cycle.travel/map , which uses open traffic data (in the US, UK and a couple of other places) to influence its OpenStreetMap-based bike routing. So, for example, in the Home Counties (broadly the London commuter belt) the A-class roads are generally busy and unrideable, whereas A-class roads in the Scottish Highlands are often (not always) beautifully quiet. cycle.travel will happily route along the latter but not the former.
The Strava approach is interesting, but Strava users are biased towards athletic cyclists who generally have a higher tolerance for busy roads. For tourers and other leisure riders I'm less convinced that the presence of other cyclists is a good signifier of pleasant cycling. (In London, for example, Strava shows the Euston Road as a busy cycling thoroughfare, which I'd never dream of riding.)
Re: An ingenious vintage German cycle map (2014)
#10Earlier quoted context omitted.
Meh. Not to be a debbie downer, but that's the most basic courtesy you can offer to cyclists, and even that isn't telling half the story. In central Europe anyway, Google Maps is unusable for creating cycling tracks or directions. There are much better alternatives, such as komoot or Strava or GPSies (I'm not affiliated.) As important as (and sometimes more important than) the profile in a section is the gradient . T…
(I'm the author of the 2014 article posted here - really pleasant surprise to see it surface on HN.) Fully agree with your comments. It's not just Google that can tell you about busy roads, though - in some countries that's available as open data. I run https://cycle.travel/map , which uses open traffic data (in the US, UK and a couple of other places) to influence its OpenStreetMap-based bike routing. So, for exampl…
I cycle along the Euston Road fairly often - it has bus lanes, which to me makes it pretty much fine. I wonder if that's another dimension of variation which should be considered.
I do avoid the underpass, though, that's terrifying!