Tangential, but I wish there was open traffic data with high coverage for planning low-traffic cycling routes. Looked at openly available aerial images, but the resolution is not high enough to detect traffic
It might be possible to model traffic with OSMnx to assign weights to roads by expected traffic levels https://github.com/gboeing/osmnx
Depending on where you live you might be able to get traffic data and maybe traffic models from public authorities using Freedom of Information requests.
eg London's TFL:
>Designed to gather data from all over London, TFL’s Urban Traffic Control (UTC) system collects car activity records via 14,000 individual road sensors located throughout the city. We were given 3-months worth of these records to create our traffic prediction model — totalling over 120 billion data points.
Once you have road weights you can use something like brouter - https://brouter.de - it can already do road types and elevation.
To further your point about trust a little: Strava-using cyclists are a very specific group of cyclists IME.
Back when I used it my commute had tens of segments with 40km/hr medallists, and a sprint segment with weekly new records in excess of 50km/hr. And, you can even catch snipers rolling on to and off a road near me to protect effort for a two kilometre junction-free sprint most weekends.
That is true but you also see people putting there dog walks on there. Or their commute to work or to the shops.
These days it's all a bit moot as you get people on ebikes and scooters "cheating" by recording their rides as road rides (either deliberately or more often by accident).
I'd be interested in reading about the changes as Strava expanded. I imagine they see a lot more casual recreational use as the viral growth moved beyond the club riders/runners, but I'd also expect you see performance increase as they captured more top performers too. Did the performance distribution grow evenly? Do people shift their routes towards segments with accessible leaderboards? …
On cheating: I used to moan about Strava accepting car and train journey speeds when it felt obvious how to detect some of them, but I can't even begin to imagine how to automate detection in the era of e-bikes. People must spend a lot more time flagging rides to maintain their magic internet points trophy now ;)
Strava heatmap is terrible. It is heavily biased toward experienced (and often very fit/quick) recreational/sport/fitness cyclists.
I'm a very experienced cyclist and I don't upload my 'transportation' rides. It's not worth it. So all the data from me riding a particular route twice, five times a week - as well as my preferred routes to various activities, shopping, etc - doesn't make it into strava. My fun / training rides do.
Strava ride uploads tend to come from more confident and willing to ride on roads that are more intimidating or require confident riding techniques to be safe (such as riding at the edge of a bike lane, or on a multi-lane road, taking the lane). Cycling in urban settings is much less intimidating if you're fit and able to accelerate quickly and bike at closer to the average speed of traffic (which often really isn't that fast.) Drivers are a lot less prone to "punish passes" and other dangerous behavior if you're fast.
They may ride a particular road that is terrible for cycling but they have no other choice because of where they are coming from or going to, and because they tend to ride a lot, they'll bias the heatmap. One of my favorite routes to ride involved an utter shitshow of 5 minutes worth of riding, and I took that road several times a week.
It should also be known that Strava tries to play up their "we make data available for city urban planners and cycling advocates!" to their userbase...and then turns around and charges an obscene amount of money.
Speaking of money: strava data means you miss the vast majority of people riding bicycles - those on the very lowest rungs of the economic ladder. They don't have GPS activity watches or GPS bike computers, they don't give a damn about recording their ride to/from work/school; they may not even have a smartphone, period. They don't have 12+ hours of leisure time a week to go for rides for fun, etc.
Bike advocacy groups are increasingly trying to account for these folks, because they're largely "invisible" - they don't sign up for newsletters from bike committees and advocacy groups, they often are riding outside "9-5" commute hours because they're working shifts/nights and riding to/from neighorhoods wealthier folks do. Most people think that in any given city the predominant cycling demographic is hipster programmers on track bikes...not realizing how many cyclists are maintenance/cleaning/construction/food service workers are out on the roads while they're asleep.
As a mapper (into OSM), the Strava Heatmap is one of the most valuable things ever for mapping off-road trails. I've found nothing more accurate for actual trail locations than the heatmap. The only thing that comes close is multiple passes with a high quality hand held GPS receiver, taken when the leaves are down.
The lingering issue I have with that is that at first glance you see some cool routes, but then you get there and realize it was clearly a route for mountainbikers. I commute via track bike, which couldn't be any more ill-suited for the terrain. Given that my bike and style of riding is more suited for flat smooth pavement, I generally just ride with traffic as the routes are better maintained and it is easier to know when there is a pothole ahead.
I'm unable to use Google applications, however that does sound very useful. The mapping application I have access to works however I am limited to what I can plan ahead of time as I don't have a device that does that type of thing.
I would think it would be a challenge to get useful data from such a source even if resolution were high enough. That nice low traffic road may have been photographed in the weekend, outside traffic hours, on a national holiday, because of a road black a kilometer away, etc.
Huh- I hope someone at google looking for a 20% time project is looking at this thread… with their traffic data this wouldn’t be too hard! The “open” part might be the hardest part for that engineer to achieve though. I guess it’s not unprecedented for Google to open up something like this, especially if using static data.
