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An ingenious vintage German cycle map (2014)

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Re: An ingenious vintage German cycle map (2014)

#11

Post by lucb1e »

mohn wrote: post #4

I'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…

For those who prefer OpenStreetMap-based solutions, OsmAnd and OpenRouteService[1] do this as well, and GraphHopper (available on osm.org and on [2]) shows total ascend+descend. Not sure what they base the data on, though, as most roads aren't tagged with a very accurate inclination, so I guess it uses a height database that is not OSM-based.

[1] https://maps.openrouteservice.org

[2] https://graphhopper.com/maps/

Re: An ingenious vintage German cycle map (2014)

#12

Post by lucb1e »

black_puppydog wrote: post #3

ohhhhh.... I'd want that in my osmand for the biking and hiking modes... :)

OsmAnd has something that's similar: https://snag.gy/z5l4WZ.jpg

Steps to reproduce:

1. Calculate a route

2. Click the blue navigation icon at the bottom (it should show the from, to, car/cycling/walking, distance, settings button, etc.)

3. Press on the distance or time.

Optionally, see the "Analyse on map" button.

Re: An ingenious vintage German cycle map (2014)

#13

Post by schoen »

bsimpson wrote: post #2

I'm curious to see an SF version, though I wonder how you would sufficiently render such a dense and hilly city in this perspective.

There's a widely-available "San Francisco Bike Map and Walking Guide"

http://www.rufusguides.com/sanfran.html

and SFBC has a (large!) vector PDF version on their site

https://www.sfbike.org/download/map.pdf

This map uses shading to indicate how steep the gradient of each individual city block is, but interestingly the shading doesn't show the direction of that gradient, so you don't immediately know whether it will be uphill or downhill. But the map also includes contour lines, so if you look closely, you can figure it out from the contours even if you're unfamiliar with the neighborhood.

On the other hand, if you're generally familiar with the neighborhood, the shading might be helpful by itself because you might have an intuition about when you're going to be going uphill and when you're going to be going downhill.

I agree that replicating the cool visualization method from the linked article might be tricky in San Francisco for the exact reasons you mention.

Re: An ingenious vintage German cycle map (2014)

#14

Post by aligibbs »

Doctor_Fegg wrote: post #9
adimitrov wrote: post #6

Earlier 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…

Just wanted to say thank you- I recently found this site and find it really useful to plan cycle routes etc.

Re: An ingenious vintage German cycle map (2014)

#15

Post by adimitrov »

Doctor_Fegg wrote: post #9
adimitrov wrote: post #6

Earlier 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…

Thanks for chiming in! cycle.travel/map is really good! I like how responsive the interface is, and its routing algorithm seems on par with other ones I've tried. Do you take into account traffic info for Germany? I couldn't find good open sources for that.

Yeah, Strava tends to overestimate the rideability of bigger roads. Keep in mind that a lot of groups use Strava, and it's easier to ride a busy road when you're in a group. In Germany, for example, you even have a different legal status on the road. I would love it if I could somehow filter the global Strava data, but they don't make their data available; not that I would expect them to.

Re: An ingenious vintage German cycle map (2014)

#16

Post by Doctor_Fegg »

adimitrov wrote: post #15
Doctor_Fegg wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

(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…

Thanks for chiming in! cycle.travel/map is really good! I like how responsive the interface is, and its routing algorithm seems on par with other ones I've tried. Do you take into account traffic info for Germany? I couldn't find good open sources for that. Yeah, Strava tends to overestimate the rideability of bigger roads. Keep in mind that a lot of groups use Strava, and it's easier to ride a busy road when you're…

No, I've not found national traffic data for Germany, unfortunately. I think it exists for one or two areas (NRW maybe?) but certainly not nationally, and the proprietary sources tend to be prohibitively expensive. I'm intrigued as to whether it might be possible to count cars in imagery as a possible alternative...

Re: An ingenious vintage German cycle map (2014)

#17

Post by black_puppydog »

lucb1e wrote: post #12
black_puppydog wrote: post #3

ohhhhh.... I'd want that in my osmand for the biking and hiking modes... :)

OsmAnd has something that's similar: https://snag.gy/z5l4WZ.jpg Steps to reproduce: 1. Calculate a route 2. Click the blue navigation icon at the bottom (it should show the from, to, car/cycling/walking, distance, settings button, etc.) 3. Press on the distance or time. Optionally, see the "Analyse on map" button.

Yes, I love that feature! I found out about it some weeks ago, on the very last leg of a brutal two day hike where I could really have used it XD

Re: An ingenious vintage German cycle map (2014)

#18

Post by mohn »

adimitrov wrote: post #6
mohn wrote: post #4

I'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…

That komoot visualization is nice. I'm glad to see that others are doing it better than Google. I thought my comment might bring out replies like this and the Open Street Map equivalent mentioned elsewhere in the thread -- happy to learn about these alternatives.

Re: An ingenious vintage German cycle map (2014)

#19

Post by mohn »

lucb1e wrote: post #11
mohn wrote: post #4

I'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…

For those who prefer OpenStreetMap-based solutions, OsmAnd and OpenRouteService[1] do this as well, and GraphHopper (available on osm.org and on [2]) shows total ascend+descend. Not sure what they base the data on, though, as most roads aren't tagged with a very accurate inclination, so I guess it uses a height database that is not OSM-based. [1] https://maps.openrouteservice.org [2] https://graphhopper.com/maps/

Thanks for sharing those. The popup on hover says "Elevation: [...]" so I think you're right that they're approximating grade by using a height database. It could be OSM-based if enough contributors are supplying lists of (lat, lon, elev) GPS coordinates from journeys they take.

It's also very possible that they're using the public domain dataset from the Shuttle Radar Topography Mission (SRTM)[1] in 2000 -- probably with some cleaning to eliminate large spikes due to trees and buildings.

[1] https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/SRTM

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