solarbird | I tried to make an ultramegamap

…and it didn’t work out, mostly because not to put too fine a point on it but the Community Transit bike maps for Snohomish County are not good. I have fundamental issues with how their legend is defined but that’s only part of it – even going by the letter of their bad-idea legend, it’s often very wrong in bad ways.

Which is a damn shame because 1) it would’ve been glorious and 2) it would’ve been nice to have a bike map that goes all the way to Skagit County, I mean damn. But I’m not going to put something out that leads people into danger like that, I don’t care if it is official.

So I pulled the bottom two kilometres (roughly) off the bottom of their county map using SNOGIS and brought my OWN map. With my OWN legends. And heat maps!

I’m not posting them to the official site yet, these are betas. I’ve got reduced-size versions on Amazon but they lose a lot of resolution due to their sizes. Still, if you want to get the general idea:

Genuinely curious about thoughts – particularly if you’re in southern Snohomish County, in which case I need your BRAIN. Or the contents thereof, that would do.

I mean, there are two important and very real separated trails heading up there, one of which I’ve explored lately though only in part, the other of which I had no idea went so far. I think it’s important to have visibility on those. They both go places that matter – Interurban goes all the way to Everett and does so via Alderwood Mall, and North Creek goes all the way up to the core of Canyon Park, a big employment area for Snohomish County and Bothell.

Plus, for people who live on the very upper border of North King County, it seems reasonable to me that they’d want some north-facing data too.

It does make the maps even bigger, though. I mean… sure does. lol

Posted via Solarbird{y|z|yz}, Collected.