I always wanted this especially when I first moved here 20 years ago.
DrProfresher
This is super cool! The map and UI are super clean, well done!
This makes me want to take out my longboard.
jez
It would be neat if it there were an option which added distance and elevation gain, but minimized the grade.
For example, a route from SOMA to Nob Hill can be made flatter by approaching from either the east or west. Technically the "flattest" as measured by elevation gain between the two is straight up Taylor from Market, but it's much nicer to bike to the top of Nob Hill by going out of the way (e.g. Polk → California, Embarcadero → Broadway, etc.)
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danserfaty
It's not accurate. I mapped it from my house on Cabrillo St in the outer Richmond to 4th avenue and it says I need to climb 25th avenue then walk Geary instead of correctly telling me to use 23rd avenue that is completely flat.
There's a weird thing going on at 22nd and San Jose in the Mission, where it doesn't seem to understand that you can simply continue down 22nd, but instead takes a hook down San Jose before backtracking. I see some other weird discontinuities like this as I click around.
I have to say that the Claude UI has made many inexplicable decisions here, including (but not limited to) the mysterious color coding, the confusing continuous slider over a discrete set, and the weird positioning of the height labels in the altitude graph.
scaredginger
This is great. Since SF is mostly a grid, I used to use the heuristic of only choosing paths that wouldn't take me further from my destination, avoiding going downhill but choosing the shallower uphill climb if a choice is given.
Other than knowing the direction of my destination, it only used local information
geor9e
It's telling me to bike on Geary and Divisadero. No thank you I'd rather stay alive.
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bwnkl
Nice visualization. For proper turn by turn directions, Valhalla [1] could help. It has elevation support so this could theoretically be built with it[2], or you just send the shape of your flattest route and it annotates it with guidance.
[2]: Currently it only supports 30m resolution for elevation unfortunately
laurencerowe
This seems to have the same issue I saw with Google Maps where it directed me along 29th St from near Mission Bernal Safeway to Diamond Heights Safeway. This includes a 22.7% grade! It's much faster and easier (at least on my cargo e-bike) to take the longer way around up Clipper St (12% grade).
The bug seems to be apparent when you set the end point at Duncan & Diamond Heights Blvd and the start point directly north along Clipper.
This route seems to maybe save 1 ft of climbing but goes up a 23% grade.
Something like this would be useful in Istanbul Taking into account public transportation and then minimizing elevation changes for the walking portion. That is one very hilly city.
dzogchen
If that's OpenStreetMap data, it is missing the required attribution.
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modo_
Would love an option for the steepest route! I run a lot in SF and try to maximize vertical gain on my routes
bigmadshoe
This is really cool! I tried it with my old address (xywz 24th Street) and it doesn't accept it for some reason. I was able to try it from 24th and Mission BART however.
I wonder how that would work here with horribly inaccurate elevation data. I often ride a specific flat straightaway and Strava and other tracking apps always show me pedaling up and down 20-meter pine trunks next to the bike path.
voxadam
Flattest or most level? They're different, but related measurements.
A surface can be flat while still increasing or decreasing in relative elevation.
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jolt42
I was wanting something similar to see the fall leaves in the mountains of NC. I wanted to pick roads at the appropriate elevation, where they are in peak, but google maps isn't really geared for that.
jdxcode
someone should make flattendallas.com as a joke
Terr_
> The slider runs along the whole trade-off between distance and climbing [...] Climbing is cumulative gain
Another mechanism might be a kind of user-defined cost-curve, where a gradual climb to 10 might be preferred over a steep climb to 8, etc.
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DonHopkins
This would be useful in Amsterdam, where bridges over canals are considered "mountains".
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secretsatan
I've been making an app similar to this but for pedestrians. I live in a very hilly city, and google maps will give you the shortest distance between 2 points, but that may involve climbing and descending steep hills even across short distances.
Any savvy resident however knows the location of escalators, lifts and metro stops to bypass that, and all have different allowed times of access and operation.
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nerdtalker
You should consider adding drive as well, some of us have manual transmissions still, although the Bike mode returns pretty reasonable results.
hacker-bob
Isn't this a bit like the "Is there alligators in the water?" test, yep its wet, there's alligators....Is the route SF hilly? yes!
steveBK123
It’s interesting that the big tech companies are all in the hilly Bay Area and yet the native mapping apps are fairly ignorant of hills impact on travel times.
Sure Apple Maps tells me there’s qualitatively that there are hills on my walking route, but the estimated walk time seems hilariously optimistic once I start walking around a hilly city. For reference I’m a fast (15min or less per mile NYer) walker normally.
For example I just input a 1/2 mile walk down a steep hill and the return walk. The estimated walk time was 10min down and 11min up. These estimates are far too close to each other and far too close to default flat walk estimates in Apple Maps.
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ziofill
Sorry if this is a stupid question, but isn’t the climb independent of the route?
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gwbas1c
Honestly, when I drive around San Francisco, I really enjoy the hills.
I really miss driving down Gough ("Go").
rbbydotdev
Gradient Descent
fhub
When I used to ride around SF on an e-bike, I’d deliberately choose undulating routes so I could climb at max assist speed and then fly down the descents above max assist speed.
tedd4u
Cool! Any way to toggle on street names on the map?
atoav
As a life-long city cyclist, with a fable for going fast while staying pedantically lawful, I found that my prefered routes are not about avoiding hills, but about:
1. The length of uninterrupted high quality bicycle ways (e.g. no traffic lights crossings etc.), a 2 km uninterrupted path beats a 1 km route with a ton of crossings and traffic lights
2. The quality of the bicycle path surface. I accept a slightly longer path if the road surface doesn't resemble a moon landscape
3. The potential for "chaos" (for a lack of better words) on that route. For example I will take a detour if it avoids going through areas with tourists and taxis, all of whom appear to be surprised by the concept of the bicycle on a bicycle path on a deep existential level.
Of course hills can play a role as well, but that may be more important in some cities than others.
jeffrallen
Lausanne residents play the same game, but with elevators, metros, bridges, stairs and Lime bikes as additional game mechanics. :)
very_good_man
I love Trick Dog!
IneffablePigeon
Neat! Now find me some hills on my routes in Cambridgeshire, it's flat as a pancake out here
qurren
Doesn't Google Maps in bicycle mode already do this?
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tw1984
can someone build a similar one for Sydney?
k7peak
now i need the steepest route for those downhill skateboard rides :)
hidude562
you could mathematically find the least bikeable city using this lol
wmichelin
It’s all just the wiggle lol
BobbyTables2
Now do Houston (:->
fnord77
Try downtown to somewhere in Bernal, say Progressive Grounds coffee house.
The flattest route is only 0.2 miles longer than the shortest, but goes from 200ft of climbing to 500ft of climbing, 12% max grade to 22% max grade.
Apple maps picks the shortest every fucking time.
andalinmicphew
Checkout https://bikehopper.org for solid elevation, bike infrastructure and transit-aware routing around the Bay Area. Some friends and I built this about 5 years ago and continue to maintain it. We use 1m DTM elevation data for SF and 50m for rural areas. DTM is a must for elevation based routing in SF as there are so many sizable buildings, large trees the other models fail hard.
I always wanted this especially when I first moved here 20 years ago.
This is super cool! The map and UI are super clean, well done!
This makes me want to take out my longboard.
It would be neat if it there were an option which added distance and elevation gain, but minimized the grade.
For example, a route from SOMA to Nob Hill can be made flatter by approaching from either the east or west. Technically the "flattest" as measured by elevation gain between the two is straight up Taylor from Market, but it's much nicer to bike to the top of Nob Hill by going out of the way (e.g. Polk → California, Embarcadero → Broadway, etc.)
It's not accurate. I mapped it from my house on Cabrillo St in the outer Richmond to 4th avenue and it says I need to climb 25th avenue then walk Geary instead of correctly telling me to use 23rd avenue that is completely flat.
The wiggle!
(in honor of my old commute, which I miss)
https://flattensf.com/#t~-122.40850~37.77493~-122.50940~37.7...
There's a weird thing going on at 22nd and San Jose in the Mission, where it doesn't seem to understand that you can simply continue down 22nd, but instead takes a hook down San Jose before backtracking. I see some other weird discontinuities like this as I click around.
I have to say that the Claude UI has made many inexplicable decisions here, including (but not limited to) the mysterious color coding, the confusing continuous slider over a discrete set, and the weird positioning of the height labels in the altitude graph.
This is great. Since SF is mostly a grid, I used to use the heuristic of only choosing paths that wouldn't take me further from my destination, avoiding going downhill but choosing the shallower uphill climb if a choice is given.
Other than knowing the direction of my destination, it only used local information
It's telling me to bike on Geary and Divisadero. No thank you I'd rather stay alive.
Nice visualization. For proper turn by turn directions, Valhalla [1] could help. It has elevation support so this could theoretically be built with it[2], or you just send the shape of your flattest route and it annotates it with guidance.
[1]: https://github.com/valhalla/valhalla
[2]: Currently it only supports 30m resolution for elevation unfortunately
This seems to have the same issue I saw with Google Maps where it directed me along 29th St from near Mission Bernal Safeway to Diamond Heights Safeway. This includes a 22.7% grade! It's much faster and easier (at least on my cargo e-bike) to take the longer way around up Clipper St (12% grade).
The bug seems to be apparent when you set the end point at Duncan & Diamond Heights Blvd and the start point directly north along Clipper.
This route seems to maybe save 1 ft of climbing but goes up a 23% grade.
https://flattensf.com/#t~-122.43968~37.74865~-122.44028~37.7...
Half a block up the street it takes the sensible route with only a 13% grade. (Between the two different starting points is 41ft of climbing.)
https://flattensf.com/#t~-122.44087~37.74864~-122.44028~37.7...
Something like this would be useful in Istanbul Taking into account public transportation and then minimizing elevation changes for the walking portion. That is one very hilly city.
If that's OpenStreetMap data, it is missing the required attribution.
Would love an option for the steepest route! I run a lot in SF and try to maximize vertical gain on my routes
This is really cool! I tried it with my old address (xywz 24th Street) and it doesn't accept it for some reason. I was able to try it from 24th and Mission BART however.
Or just https://brouter.de/ with min elevation profile.
Absolutely love the live profile updating when you swipe from flatter to shorter.
Cool, I used to build this https://github.com/cheeaun/steepless (2014)
I wonder how that would work here with horribly inaccurate elevation data. I often ride a specific flat straightaway and Strava and other tracking apps always show me pedaling up and down 20-meter pine trunks next to the bike path.
Flattest or most level? They're different, but related measurements.
A surface can be flat while still increasing or decreasing in relative elevation.
I was wanting something similar to see the fall leaves in the mountains of NC. I wanted to pick roads at the appropriate elevation, where they are in peak, but google maps isn't really geared for that.
someone should make flattendallas.com as a joke
> The slider runs along the whole trade-off between distance and climbing [...] Climbing is cumulative gain
Another mechanism might be a kind of user-defined cost-curve, where a gradual climb to 10 might be preferred over a steep climb to 8, etc.
This would be useful in Amsterdam, where bridges over canals are considered "mountains".
I've been making an app similar to this but for pedestrians. I live in a very hilly city, and google maps will give you the shortest distance between 2 points, but that may involve climbing and descending steep hills even across short distances.
Any savvy resident however knows the location of escalators, lifts and metro stops to bypass that, and all have different allowed times of access and operation.
You should consider adding drive as well, some of us have manual transmissions still, although the Bike mode returns pretty reasonable results.
Isn't this a bit like the "Is there alligators in the water?" test, yep its wet, there's alligators....Is the route SF hilly? yes!
It’s interesting that the big tech companies are all in the hilly Bay Area and yet the native mapping apps are fairly ignorant of hills impact on travel times.
Sure Apple Maps tells me there’s qualitatively that there are hills on my walking route, but the estimated walk time seems hilariously optimistic once I start walking around a hilly city. For reference I’m a fast (15min or less per mile NYer) walker normally.
For example I just input a 1/2 mile walk down a steep hill and the return walk. The estimated walk time was 10min down and 11min up. These estimates are far too close to each other and far too close to default flat walk estimates in Apple Maps.
Sorry if this is a stupid question, but isn’t the climb independent of the route?
Honestly, when I drive around San Francisco, I really enjoy the hills.
I really miss driving down Gough ("Go").
Gradient Descent
When I used to ride around SF on an e-bike, I’d deliberately choose undulating routes so I could climb at max assist speed and then fly down the descents above max assist speed.
Cool! Any way to toggle on street names on the map?
As a life-long city cyclist, with a fable for going fast while staying pedantically lawful, I found that my prefered routes are not about avoiding hills, but about:
1. The length of uninterrupted high quality bicycle ways (e.g. no traffic lights crossings etc.), a 2 km uninterrupted path beats a 1 km route with a ton of crossings and traffic lights
2. The quality of the bicycle path surface. I accept a slightly longer path if the road surface doesn't resemble a moon landscape
3. The potential for "chaos" (for a lack of better words) on that route. For example I will take a detour if it avoids going through areas with tourists and taxis, all of whom appear to be surprised by the concept of the bicycle on a bicycle path on a deep existential level.
Of course hills can play a role as well, but that may be more important in some cities than others.
Lausanne residents play the same game, but with elevators, metros, bridges, stairs and Lime bikes as additional game mechanics. :)
I love Trick Dog!
Neat! Now find me some hills on my routes in Cambridgeshire, it's flat as a pancake out here
Doesn't Google Maps in bicycle mode already do this?
can someone build a similar one for Sydney?
now i need the steepest route for those downhill skateboard rides :)
you could mathematically find the least bikeable city using this lol
It’s all just the wiggle lol
Now do Houston (:->
Try downtown to somewhere in Bernal, say Progressive Grounds coffee house.
The flattest route is only 0.2 miles longer than the shortest, but goes from 200ft of climbing to 500ft of climbing, 12% max grade to 22% max grade.
Apple maps picks the shortest every fucking time.
Checkout https://bikehopper.org for solid elevation, bike infrastructure and transit-aware routing around the Bay Area. Some friends and I built this about 5 years ago and continue to maintain it. We use 1m DTM elevation data for SF and 50m for rural areas. DTM is a must for elevation based routing in SF as there are so many sizable buildings, large trees the other models fail hard.
Allow me to plug my own SF microsite https://isitsunnyinthemission.com
Combine these two for the easiest bike ride to a sunny day