Another Way to Make Biking Attractive: Simplify Route Difficulty Mapping

An article in today's Atlantic cities describes how Austin, TX, rates the difficulty of riding various key bicycle routes in the city.  The approach is very much like that used in rating ski slopes.  It is specifically aimed at potential bicyclists who are not familiar with the technical jargon known to regular bike riders about road conditions and characteristics. 

Here are some excerpts:

Bike Maps That Give Riders the Info They Actually Need

Sarah Goodyea

Anyone who has ever used a bike map in an unfamiliar city knows that the colored lines showing the bike lane network can be hard to assess. Each municipality has its own system, and many of these are fairly crude, failing to give you any real clue as to what type of experience you’ll have when you’re on the ground riding.

Will the bike path marked on the map provide a pleasant pedal on a neighborhood street? Or a harrowing odyssey along a major arterial, with cars whizzing by at high speed? . . .

The city’s map prioritizes rider comfort in its symbology. "We tried to make it real intuitive," says Wilkes, who has been refining the concept for several years now. Bike trails, separated cycle tracks, and what the city terms "quiet streets" – in peaceful, low-traffic neighborhoods – are marked in vivid green. "High comfort" roads are bright blue."Medium comfort" is marked in a darker blue. "Low comfort" is indicated by a cautionary yellow. And red signifies "extremely low comfort," as in, you probably don’t want to go there unless you are one of the rodeo-riding one percent. Directional arrows indicate hills and how steep they are.. . .

 Click here to read the rest.  It has some good ideas for mapping Reston's roads and paths for bicylists (and maybe even a few pathway walkers).