Mapping a bike route always seems harder than it should be. Google sending us on the most dangerous and unnecessary routes has become a running joke with my friends. After risking our lives, we usually find out that there was a beautiful, car-free trail nearby. Google Maps avoided the route to shave two minutes from our trip and send us headlong into high speed city thoroughfares. So how do you create the right bike touring maps for your trip?
Here’s a quick illustration to help you get what I mean. I stopped by my local bike shop (City Bikes) just before a trip out to watch DC United open their new stadium (with free bicycle concierge I might add).
Predictably, Google routed us through the most trafficked, tourist segments of DC. I even selected a beautiful waterfront trail alternative first. Apparently it switched mid-ride and we missed some critical turnoffs to get back to the Rock Creek Trail route. I’m not going to lie, this ride ended up being scary, and it didn’t need to be at all. Extra traffic and stoplights also tend to make these routes slower in the long run.
What tools are useful for creating bike touring maps?
Yes, I have tried app other than Google Maps and I just haven’t found one that gets this right (I’m open to suggestions!) Usually, what I come up with is a site that offers static links, images, and PDFs of whatever trail you’re thinking about traveling. Worse, it’s often broken down further into segments that are indistinguishable unless you came to the page with advanced knowledge of the geography of those trails to begin with. Then there are the MapMyRide type sites that more often than not want you to a monthly subscription fee to use routing with GPX files along routes that are randomly assorted, or dramatically varying length, specificity, and quality, and are entirely reliant on the community to provide.
What does it mean? For now the only reliable way to create proper bike touring maps that get you from Point A to Point B is to painstakingly build your route by hand. We’ll set up our trip using a combination of the tools mentioned above, yet more tools, and curate a step-by-step trip guide that gets us to where we want to be.
For the record, the East Coast Greenway has a very pretty and functional mapping site and I strongly suggest it as a general guidance tool. But when you consider the Greenway’s current state of completion (32%!) and the lack of on-trail accommodations, you’ll quickly find this is not going to be your actual trip planning tool, and in fact you have yourself a mounting Traveling Salesmen problem.
And of course we’ll also discuss tools for actively mapping your bike tour using your smartphone or gadgets like the GPS-enabled watches.
Mapping a bike tour
In subsequent posts we’ll talk in depth about how we decided where to ride. We’ll share our decisions and experiences arranging a place to camp. We’ll identify both the main route and side paths we’ll take. And finally, why we chose this segment to explore first. Between now and our ride (late August) we’ll add in some critical components like food breaks, sightseeing, and if we’re lucky a microbrewery tour and some swimming.