I got a question asking "why are the Seattle lines green" and the answer is "because that's the colour set they use on their map" but the real answer is "I need to include enough of their legend for it to make sense."
So now I have.
If you downloaded it before around 8:40pm Saturday May 11, you might grab the new copy if you want the Seattle legend included too.
Well I didn't get any corrections (but found a small one of my own) so the re-implementation of the Greater Northshore Connector Bike Map - now with slightly more map height, contrast, and more easily seen lines - has dropped. Enjoy!
Or if you don't mind .jpg and a little chopped off the bottom I guess you could just grab the preview here, it's at full resolution, just compressed a little and some of the bottom removed to fit.
and also because despite that i biked to seattle electric bikes in bothell and #bothell ski and bike in #kenmore and told them about my maps and showed them small versions and once they finally accepted that i really wasn't trying to sell them anything they were really into it
like me they are sick of having no king county bike map and here i walk in with half of one
seattle electric bikes in bothell was even "we would pay you for these" but i know i can't break even doing that so said "just go to fedex"
all that enthusiasm might vanish now that i'm out of their shops but it was pretty strong when I was there - seattle electric bikes was even talking about making a version with more tourist stuff on it an i was like "it's creative commons feel free"
tomorrow i'm gonna hit up the bike shop in lake forest park, gotta get all of northshore
Whelp, here's a second proofing release of the vector-graphics based map re-implementation.It's substantially finished now I think? I made a couple of very small path corrections since the last proofing release and this one has text copy and icons and a legend.
The new vector graphics version is attached. Note it does NOT yet have icons or text or even a legend. Note also the "fuzzy line" to indicate difficult or marginal trails has been changed to a "pattern line" which I think is more legible at more sizes - particularly when printed when the difference is pretty stark.
I think the screen preview shows the problems with the current version's line thickness and spacing inconsistency; 15th Ave NE near Hamlin Park in Shoreline is a good example. I think in the lower image at the same resolution, the separate lines are much more easily made out.
I'm also thinking this new line type for challenging trails - pattern rather than fuzzy - works better at very small sizes. But I'll take opinions on that for sure.
I patched it. Using prints from my less good printer which is why the water colour is different. But via scissors I was able to make the different colour mostly mean salt water vs. fresh so that’s something?
things I need to do differently on Greater Northshore: my double line separation needs to be more consistent. they get too close in places and that’s bad.
also I need a better tool but I don’t know what. something like illustrator that preserves objects. but not adobe shit because yikes money.
I decided it was kind of rude to cut off discovery park so I widened the workspace to put it back on
and that also gave me the space to add back the west seattle bridge detail so I did that too
and a little cleanup why not
anyway it's 722x656mm or roughly 28.5"x26" now at intended print resolution (300 dpi because that's a standard here)
I really think and hope I'm done with this version, now that I know this thing has legs I'm kinda like "whelp now time to do it over again with proper tools" so that maintenance will be easier and alignment won't be such a bear and a half
I grabbed a minute to slap Creative Commons 3.0 BY license on the bike map project in github. I dunno if anybody in particular was waiting for that, but there it is.
(I was thinking whether to be BY-NC but if somebody wants to publish a book of maps and include this one, as long as it means more help for biking I don't care.)
Obviously this applies only to Greater Northshore map that I made, not to anything else including the Megamap tile-together of all the maps that actually get updated around here that I know of.
Here, have the quickly-made MEGAMAP 1, a combination of the new Greater Northshore Connector Bike Map, most of the City of Seattle 2023 Bike Map, and the April 2024 2 Line Connector Eastside Bike Map.
It is NOT SMALL. Printed at native 300dpi, it's right about 26" square, or 660mm square.
Release 1 of the Greater Northshore Bike Map is NOW! Full res version is downloadable, it's like 600mm/24" wide printed at 300dpi and connects the Seattle and 2 Line Connector Eastside bike maps.
(and my printer doesn't like it. it doesn't like full tabloid and this is bigger than that, it took like ten tries to get this good and it's still a little weird a few places but not enough to care)