I am wondering what strategy the hard core folks use to find nodes that are in wooded areas. I have 31 “streets” left to finish the town of Maynard MA and they are mostly in wooded areas as they are not real streets. I will not resort to marking these manually complete so I am bushwhacking through these areas hoping that I hit the nodes. Having spent the past two days without success in the “Quirk Well Site” street, I think I need a better approach.
Is there an easy way to get the GPS coordinates for the nodes and to use a phone to get real time feedback?
Everything I have left in the town of Maynard should be deleted! I did 4% of Boston when I was working in Cambridge and that was a lot easier than what I have done in the tiny town of Maynard where I work now. Maynard has lot’s of conservation land and some strange land-locked parcels that are classified as streets.
I’d rather see the bad nodes go away at some point. Have the user base flag them and maybe have an algorithm to get rid of them. I’m doing all the trails in Acton MA right now. I am done all but the winter access trail in Heath Hen, but I have lots of red nodes. I’m not going to go onto private property or bushwhack to get the nodes. I know I’ve ran the whole trail. Fwiw.
I don’t think there is anything wrong in manually completing streets! I manually complete streets that have nodes on private land or if I I’ve completed them but bad GPS data says I hadn’t hit a certain node when I know I did ect…
If I were only using City Strides to track my own streets then I would consider marking some manually.
I also like to see where I am on the ranking of the % complete for different towns. For towns like Maynard that have some streets where every node is not accessible (FEMA for example) then I have an issue if someone just marks it as complete and gets ahead of me in the ranking. I have noticed this when I look at someone who has a high percentage for a town but when I look as their lifetime map I see very little actually done.
My preference for % complete for a town is to only base it on actual streets completed and to leave out manually completed streets OR to base it on the ratio nodes completed/nodes available
I get what you’re saying and for that person who marks as complete with little to show on their lifemap as you describe then I would put that down to cheating.
In my case the lifemap or city map will be my proof of 100% completion (when it happens) with a perfectly good explanation as to which ones don’t show as complete.
P.s if it’s obvious that someone is cheating for percentages then I would have a word with James I’m sure that’s not the ethos of this site.
I’m fascinated how strict many of these posts are regarding “have run” vs “manual entry” Perhaps it’s my personality, perhaps since I run a lot in NYC and NJ, where there are many “streets” that aren’t streets, or other nodes that aren’t publicly accessible… I don’t feel tortured when flagging a street not being a street, or marking something completed manually. I generally reduce Citystrides’s challenge as what % of my town’s runnable streets/nodes have I done. I’m not going to let a railway, mapping data noise, or river create a technicality that incentivizes any further riskier running behavior on my part.
I have manually completed some streets and see nothing wrong with it, as long as you have run the street. In my case, it is due to bad GPS data and in one case, I ran it twice, but the GPS points were all over the place and missed the nodes, in part because part of the road goes underneath a long overhead walkway. I have also run areas shown as complete, where I hadn’t run, but had hit the nodes when running cross streets.
For those of you with monthly contributions, you might have some success with LifeMap Live.
I announced this feature in this other post, but the core details are:
It adds a button to the LifeMap under the view controls in the top left of the page. Click that thing, allow it permission to access your location, and you’ll appear as a little blue dot on the map. It’ll zoom right in on you, as well - you’re already out node hunting, you don’t also need to hunt for yourself on a map.
I’ve used this mostly successfully in order to hit missing nodes. However, as you know, different GPS devices track differently, so sometimes, my watch data doesn’t match up, especially in areas with tall buildings or trees, but that isn’t unexpected. I hate manually completing a street (but do it when necessary), so I usually head back and try to hit the node again.
Hello, does anyone here no how long it takes to make roads go away after they are flagged? It’s been at least 3 weeks on some, if not longer and they’re still listed and showing nodes (some don’t exist as roads and are labeled “New Road A”, etc., and some are businesses behind locked fences, not actual roads).
On the opposite end of the spectrum, I’ve run a lot of new roads and they aren’t on the map - what/how do we get new developments added?
