RELEASE CANDIDATE 2 of the Greater #Northshore Bike Connector Map, built to link the Seattle and 2 Line Eastside Rail maps. Since we haven’t had one and nobody else is going to connect the dots, I decided I would.
Printed at 300dpi, the map is 24″x10.4″ or 608x264mm.
NEW IN RC2:
Added note "very difficult" to part of Tolt Pipeline Trail.
Added steepness indicators on Goat Trail Road/NE 178th.
Added steepness indicator on short path from Burke-Gilman to 61st Ave NE.
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
Okay! New map! The attachment is the first representation of dataset 1.1, using a lot of dotted green lines (as per the Seattle map legend) to show non-bike-signed routes commonly used by people biking.
(It's not full resolution because Mastodon shrinks it.)
It also includes a couple of actual bike-supporting routes I missed in dataset 1.0, and a lot more dirt/loose gravel trails, particularly in unincorporated King County and on the northern Eastside. But there's bits of adds everywhere.
The dotted green is experimental. Feedback is definitely requested.
Full resolution is at Github, select the map labelled "EXPERIMENTAL":
That's where the bike lanes stop and everybody gets RIGHT the fuck off. People going to Woodinville divert out of their way over to Sammamish River and people going to Tolt Pipeline divert towards 112th via 156th, despite both of those being longer routes.
And I don't know the reason. I can make some pretty good guesses, but they're guesses.
But I don't need to; the heat map tells me what's up.
One thing working with the version 1.1 dataset is telling me is that if there are some pretty obvious-seeming ways that an un-notated map would tell you to go... but the heat data says nobody does that.
And that's the value of including these green dashed lines, because ... that lack of heat data says there's a reason not go do there.
This version adds heatmap-sourced non-bike-infrastructure routes that people use anyway as a new class, in Seattle-style green. Think of them as demand paths.
I think they're worth adding because they tell people: yes, people use these fragments of infrastructure; this is how they connect together. This is where people actually go.
Also more dirt trails, a little more road-level infrastructure - minor stuff - and an improved legend.
The attached is at reduced resolution because that's what Mastodon does. But it's okay.
Okay so with no show stoppers appearing, I've dropped Greater Northshore BIke Map 1.2 - Late May 2024, which shows bike infrastructure and adds preferred non-infrastructure routes between the Seattle and the new Eastside 2 Line Bike Connector maps.
It covers Shoreline, Lake Forest Park, Kenmore, Bothell, Woodinville, Juanita, parts of north Redmond that the 2 Line leaves out, and a decent chunk of unincorporated NE King County.
Next up will be a revision of the MEGAMAP, a map that pastes together the Greater Northshore map and the two others into one big poster-sized beast.
(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)
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.
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.
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 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.
Thinking of adapting Seattle map's "faint green dashes" for "unmarked but regularly used by bicycle riders." It'll mostly be useful in unincorporated King County areas of the map.
I've used it here on Bear Creek, NE 132nd, NE 133rd, as a test.
Basically I want them to be much less visible, but still findable, much like the Seattle map does. And continuing their legend on this strikes me as better than making up something else completely different.
Has anyone here used the Avondale Road barely-marked "bike lanes" from around the Power Line Trail up to NE 132nd? Because on Google Maps they lack things like "this is a bike lane" markers except at the very, very end. Right now I've marked them as dual sharerows because of how bad they look to me. But are they secretly okay in person?
one note on the map that I did think about: the lowest-grade red and green lines are distinguishable in black and white. the red lines use dashes, the green are dots with narrower spacing between.
the legend in this version didn’t make that super clear but I’ve revised the source to fix that.
anyway the big reason i went to woodinville today was to take the northshore map to woodinville bike
and they were the first people to have more data for me, though they mostly told me how to find it rather than giving it to me. it's all up in Hollywood Hills and a lot of it is off-road, so not really destination focused. But some of it, apparently, is paved and connected to other stuff, so of some interest.