Terrain Maps!

I've added terrain maps to veloroutes! This new map type allows you to see the elevation changes, e.g. those crazy hills we all climb on our commutes, charity rides, group rides, training, whatever - we all know hills! (Unless you live in Florida I suppose)

Anyway, here's what the Cougar Mountain Climb looks like with the Terrain Feature:

New Veloroutes.org Feature: View Multiple routes at once!

What if you could draw all the bike-maps in the world onto one map? Hell, even Business Week wants to do it.

Well now you can, using veloroutes.org and Google Earth.

Here is the Seattle-area with bike multiple bike routes in Google Earth: (the yellow lines represent bike routes saved by users of veloroutes.org)


The Washington D.C. area with bike-routes overlaid:


The U.S with some bike routes overlaid onto it:


If you don't have Google Earth its worth the free download, and even runs on Linux!

If you do have Google Earth, go ahead and see this for yourself! It's much more interesting when you can zoom in on the routes to see detail. You'll need a broad-band connection to download this, but it's worth the wait.

Tips for viewing in Google Earth:

• Turn off Terrain, it seems to interfere with the route lines and erases them when you zoom in (checkbox in lower-left)
  
• Turn off Borders - this may make it easier to see the route lines (also a checkbox in lower-left)

This is all pretty experimental at this point, but eventually I'd like to include routes from Bikely.com and other mapping sites. Imagine a map of the globe colored with bike routes - it's possible!

Cycling Cue-Sheets For the Masses!

Today I'm releasing a feature on veloroutes that will take the route you create and generate turn-by-turn directions automatically! Here's an example of the output for a route I clicked:

Cue sheet for downtown to the ave

key: -:straight, R:right, L:left, Rev:reverse

Total distance: 4.97 miles

Description:

yeah, you could take eastlake for a less-hilly route, but fuck that! let’s do some hills!

distance	heading	intersection	area	elevation
0 mi	- (East)	1st Ave & Cherry St	Seattle, King County, WA	38.2 ft
0.29 mi	L (North)	Cherry St & 6th Ave	Seattle, King County, WA	195.0 ft
0.59 mi	R (East)	Seneca St & 6th Ave	Seattle, King County, WA	200.3 ft
1.08 mi	Rev (West)	Boylston Ave & Seneca St	Seattle, King County, WA	335.4 ft
1.14 mi	Rev (East)	University St & Boylston Ave	Seattle, King County, WA	320.4 ft
1.28 mi	L (North)	Broadway & E Union St	Seattle, King County, WA	295.2 ft
2.12 mi	R (East)	Broadway E & E Roy St	Seattle, King County, WA	341.3 ft
2.15 mi	L (North)	E Roy St & 10th Ave E	Seattle, King County, WA	345.9 ft
3.39 mi	L (West)	10th Ave E & E Roanoke St	Seattle, King County, WA	166.6 ft
3.47 mi	R (North)	E Roanoke St & Harvard Ave E	Seattle, King County, WA	158.3 ft
4.41 mi	R (East)	Roosevelt Way NE & NE Campus Pky	Seattle, King County, WA	98.7 ft
4.61 mi	L (North)	NE Campus Pky & University Way NE	Seattle, King County, WA	110.0 ft

You can read more about this feature on the veloroutes forum post about it. If you want to go ahead and create your route go to the map.

(If you haven't heard of veloroutes, check it out! It's actually run by a cyclist (me), unlike some another bike-mapping site run by a corporation. And now it generates cue-sheets like that other mapping site that used to be really popular, but seems to be constantly broken. Sure, those other sites may have pretty designs, but my site's got heart!)

140-mile weekend

Since a friend and I are doing the one-day STP this year (and we're dabbling in the local race scene too), I've been trying to pack on the miles, and keep the average speed up.

On Saturday I did the lakes washington and sammamish loop ride, and I averaged 18.5 mph on the 79 mile ride. Highway 900 in between Renton and Issaquah is my favorite part, you're totally in the country, and only 15 miles ride outside of Seattle! Who'd have thought you could see cows in a field so close to the city..

Here's the elevation profile of the two-lakes loop:


On Monday I rode out to carnation and back, and did the Tolt Hill climb twice, once going east, once going west. Going downhill on the 10% grade for a mile section, I hit 49 mph!! If only it was a longer descent, I could probably hit 50. The TT we're doing goes up the hill heading west, the hard way.

Elevation profile of the carnation ride:


The race is this Saturday, I'll certainly post how (bad) I did when it's all said and done. And here's the profile of the 3rd Carnation TT:

Top five finish, but not in a bike race

I started getting hits on veloroutes.org (the site I run) from a new URL the other day, and it's bicycling.about.com's Top Five Route Mapping Tools page!! Veloroutes made #4!!

Not bad considering how new my site is (just less than six months), and considering how established Bikely, Routeslip and the others are.

woot!

The Holy Grail of Bicycle Mapping features

http://toporoute.com seems to have implemented a feature that no other mapping-site (that I'm aware of) has: follow the road for you.

Meaning that if you click at one end of a curvy road, and then click a few miles away on the same road, the site will draw all of the points in between for you! This is the coolest thing since the Google Map came out itself..

I believe this is done by setting the Google Maps API to output = KML, but from what I've heard this is against the Google Terms of Service. I might just give it a shot on veloroutes.org and see what happens tho...

Movin' on up!

After posting a link to the mapping site on programmableweb.com, the hits are finally starting to come in! Even got a few hits from google searches.

And as of today it's at #7 on the 'most popular new mashups' section. It was #15 a few days ago, so it's definitely getting a little attention.

Elevation data is now being saved with each route, which should make the route-loading feature a lot more fun.

route mapping site launched

there are a already few sites out there to map/view cycling routes, but i decided to make my own.

there wouldn't be much point in just re-doing what's already out there, so my site has some extra features i haven't seen anywhere else:

• aimed at specific cities (currently seattle, portland, san fran, denver, chicago, nyc, and hotlanta), so it can be tailored to them (web cams, weather, etc)
• local weather
  
• real-time elevation graph (shows it as you click your route)
• topo (elevation) maps
• special markers, such as for known hills, etc
• web cams on the map, so you can see what it looks like in different parts of the city
• no google ads since i'm not greedy (at least not yet)
  

anyway, here it is, enjoy:

http://veloroutes.org

screenshot: