A map showing the steepness of streets (2013) | Hacker News Reader

A map showing the steepness of streets (2013)

tobyeglesfield.com

126 pointsTomte21 comments

This kind of visualization can be really useful for impaired people. I can guess that street steepness is an important concern for people in wheelchair, a few degrees more and it become impossible to move. And even if topographic contours may be considered as the gold standard, it is often barely readable for big cities: I consider myself good as reading map, but being able to see steepness of street in cities is hard and requires a lot of mental work. Providing this kind of easily readable map for tourists would then be useful for mentally impaired people, which is even more useful as mental and physical impairments frequently come together. I would go further and compare this with metro maps: if they are not represented on traditional topographic maps it is for a reason: readability. And the proposed method offers a good readability of steepness for people needing this information.

So yes, having this kind information available is nothing new. But no, it's not reinventing the wheel as other people may have suggested here.

Similar posting discussed recently: http://blog.systemed.net/post/10 (discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17632378).

Interesting approach, but I am a little confused by the finished maps. For example, on the Queenstown one from top-left: you're going down Gorge, left on Hallenstein to corner of Weaver: one minor hill to overcome. Had you stayed on Gorge to make a left on Weaver, there's a major hill to climb to arrive at the same corner. Is the map inaccurate in respect to heights? Does the perspective skew distances?

I wonder if another approach could be more effective: keep the standard 2D projection, and use something like a colour gradient or vary street width to indicate street slope.

I would think the head-on perspective of the map precludes the gentle down-slope of Gorge St between Hallenstein to Weaver from being displayed. Here I would say the down-slope of Gorge St to be implied by viewing the other incline markers that are presented. Indeed, a contour-map seems to concur this point:

https://www.google.com/maps/@-45.0276901,168.6623366,15.5z/d...

> on the Queenstown one from top-left: you're going down Gorge, left on Hallenstein to corner of Weaver: one minor hill to overcome. Had you stayed on Gorge to make a left on Weaver, there's a major hill to climb to arrive at the same corner.

The slope on Hallenstein looks to be longer than the slope on Weaver. So it's less steep to reach the same height.

Great design. One thing I feel is missing which I’d like to see in the key - gradient percent of the hill (Blue: 2-4%, Orange: 5-7%, Red: 8+%).

Is this actually an elevated map? Or is it just a 2D map with triangles tacked underneath? For example, on the Queenstown map, right center, does King Road go up and down? Or does it curve to the side? Is Hallenstein Street drawn a few pixels further up the y axis because it is higher up the hill? I do like the idea and the aesthetics a lot though.

Q: Why not just use a topo map? People who have problems with steep hills have probably learned to use a topo map to avoid bad routes. Give them the sort of map they're used to looking at instead of something totally new.

I have health issues that make avoiding steep streets important for me. The problem with topo maps is that it's a pain in the ass to read them, specially in areas with lots of features, such as cities.

I like color-coded height maps, they can give you an intuitive feel for how a city lies on top of its terrain. It's very hard to make out moderate slopes though, e.g. if the city has high hills. I would most prefer a color-coded map showing the gradient.

Incidentally, if anyone has pointers to where this kind of map could be obtained (mostly for european cities in my case, but any resource would be helpful), I would appreciate it. Right now, I just try my luck with google when visiting a new city.

Google-maps directions—set to cycling—gives gradient info. I don't use that feature regularly—and not for accessibility planning|assessment—but if you haven't checked it out, it may be worth a look.

A topo map gives you more information than you need, while a key point of an effective visualization is to distill the information down to just what the audience needs to know to get their questions answered. In particular with modern reading habits of skimming and quick glances when engaging with digital content, the simpler solution is (as usual) better.

Topographical maps present the height and leave the gradient to be interpreted by the reader, if it's possible at all. What this shows is the gradient and is much more useful to me as a cyclist and/or pedestrian, I don't care if I'm ascending 50m but I do care if that's over a 100 meter or 200 meter distance. Depending on how fine grained a topographical map is this information could be hard to impossible to interpret.

A topo map would be too busy. Also, the steepness of roads and the surrounding land can be different, so a topo map could also be less informative at first glance.

In the special case of Edinburgh, Ordnance Survey maps are quite misleading about some streets as there are quite a few streets that are actually bridges built between hills - the map gives the topography of the underlying ground not the street - so some streets look steep on the map but are actually built to be level.

I like top maps, but they are less useful in cities. Compare:

http://www.tobyeglesfield.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/10/DRC...

https://www.openstreetmap.org/#map=15/-45.0344/168.6630&laye...

Topo maps miss bridges too.

I would hazard a guess that the average person doesn't really know what a topo map is and wouldn't know how to read one if they had it open in front of them.

Schools in my country are well above average then...

Yeah I feel like this is re-inventing the wheel - as a topographic map is a solved problem from (100?) years ago. Regarding the learning curve - it takes a maximum of 15 minutes to understand how to read them. After you 'get it' you can visualize the flat map in 3d.

The one issue of using topo maps for city navigation is that the contour lines are sometimes hard to make out when having buildings, streets and other noise in the foreground (I'm using OsmAnd contours as an example).

The blog post itself is really nice of how it goes in-depth. The final product reminds me of those ski-resort maps that show the downhills. The final product works really well as a tourist informational map.

If you're new in town and want to go to location X, what is better? Glancing at the map and immediately grasping that the street is up a hill, or looking at a probably unfamiliar topographical map and possibly spending 5 to 15 minutes learning how to read it? I'd kill for a map like this for any hilly town I'd visit, and I know how to read topographical maps

Height contours of topographic maps have existed more than 100 years.

Actually, almost 250 years:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schiehallion_experiment

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