Add hiking trails

No, wandrer uses the way ID from OSM, then calculates what percentage you have completed of each way, then aggregates this for all ways in your city. The number of streets/roads/ways is not used at all, just the percentage of distance completed. I know since I managed to reach 100% of my home town in wandrer😁
So of course some kind of similar logic could be used for CS. And note that this does not only cover trails, also unnamed service roads, cycleways etc

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I have often pondered what would happen, when a name is not present on an otherwise valid way (in the CS sense), if the ID# of the way was used instead? Sure, it’s a long number, but at least it’s unique. :wink:

One problem I could see, if a long, unnamed, way was made up of many shorter ways, CS would not know they are the same way… But in reality, it’s not that big of a deal, since we are after the nodes on the ways.

I like seeing this being talked about again.

I call road mapping “heatmapping” and I know they call trail mapping “redlining”. Would be cool to see node hunter show trails a different color and see percentage of trails complete for towns. I always try to run every trail I run into when doing the roads. Its fun when I accidentally run into some trails and throw my road mapping plan out the window to map the trails. Though I’m also trying to redline the high peaks in the Adirondacks now and would love to also see how Im doing against others up there to keep it fun.

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Maybe CS will need a “super hard” mode :grimacing: if trails are included!

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I am personally indifferent to including trails. But, the site motto is Run. Every. Street. :slight_smile:

I do have a pretty strong preference that stats for completion of trails be segregated from streets. Trail running is in many ways quite a different discipline. For myself, I would rather track progress on streets and trails independently.

I’m not sure that “all trails in a given city” is the right metric. I’m not sure if it is possible with OSM, but the equivalent of “administrative region” for trails seems like it wouldn’t be “city”.

Last thought: If all the work to implement and maintain trails functionality ends up being at the expense of making/keeping the city streets functionality top-notch, I would be against it.

As always, James, big thanks for all your work here. I especially appreciate your asking all of us for our input!

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I love this idea! I’d like to see hiking trails added. While we’re add it, can Cross Country skiing be something that shows up when synced via Strava?

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Bumping this one and voted.
The single one thing making me hesitate focusing on CityStrides vs other options is that whilst I do a lot of solo walking/dog walking in cities and towns, all my family weekend walks are exploring new parks, woodlands and areas, and Wandrer.earth lets you track these but CityStrides does not.
The problem with Wandrer is that it has really random stuff on the map like every lane in an allotment or car park - CityStrides does not have this issue and the map is much cleaner. Example:

image

Being able to do family walks and have that exploration rewarded on here, likely as a seperate entity to how streets are tracked and rewarded, would make me personally a lot more dedicated to this vs other options, and I think it would for others too, especially in other countries where there are significantly more trails. Look how popular AllTrails is now!

My main point of concern is that OpenStreetMap trail data is extremely unreliable and I feel uncomfortable yeeting people into the woods on the pretense that the trails being presented are safe, accurate, or even present at all.

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fair point!

Just to be completely frank: as a woman, I feel materially safer running on city streets than I do in the woods, and that is a relatively common concern for female runners. If you do decide to add trails, please include the ability to opt out.

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I agree. And thinking particularly about Sydney, my home city, there are large tracts of bushland surrounding many suburbs even in fairly central parts of the metropolitan areas, especially in the north of the city, but also in some areas to the south around the river basins (of which there are several). In addition to the concerns of being woman alone on these, the terrain is not conducive to solo walking (and for many, any kind of running), as the gradients are steep, often muddy and rocky, and wildlife (like snakes) can be found on some at certain times of the year.

My “walk Sydney” project is essentially a lone one, but if I wanted to get off-road I’d try and find a friend to go with me. That’s only going to be occasional. So adding kilometres of trails that I am unlikely to get a chance to walk makes the project even more overwhelming. (It is pretty overwhelming as it is, given the size of Sydney.)

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completely agree with the above and my suggestion would always for it to be pretty seperate and having an opt-out is a good idea too.

Maybe it should be opt-in instead

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