Here – here’s why I’m doing all this relabelling work in one photo of actual printouts of the same area of map, laid out side by side on a tabletop, and shot from above:
Look at the street names.
That’s why.
Posted via Solarbird{y|z|yz}, Collected.
So I’m redoing the text on the Seattle 2023 bike map, because I figured out that while in digital form on a phone or something it’s okay, printed, it’s REALLY not.
And since the printed poster is the biggest single part of the point of this whole exercise, if I want this actually usable on streets people don’t already know… I have to fix it.
And fixing it means new text everywhere important, and often that means having to block out existing text.
The problem with this is that this sometimes means covering up streets. Not important ones, but streets nonetheless, where the old labels crossed that road and still need to be removed.
Let’s take Mary NW here:
The original small label text for Mary NW crossed a road, probably… 95th street? Honestly not sure. It’s not labelled, so I’m not adding a label of my own.
To remove the old Mary Ave NW label, though, I had to block over it with the background colour. That removed part of a street line.
Now, sure, I could draw another line there and replace it. I’ve done that before and will do again if I have to. But that’s an extra step that I might be able to avoid, right? What if instead of labelling the road “Mary Ave NW,” I just labelled it “Mary NW” instead, and make sure the first vertical of the capital N lies where the street line should be?
There’s no Mary Street so there won’t be ambiguity, so why not?
N 90th Street lower and to the right is doing the same thing. So is NW 90th to the left, but it’s the leftmost diagonal bar of the W.
This isn’t a big flashy trick. If I do it right, nobody will ever notice that I did it. That’s the goal, really. It’s not something anyone should see.
But it is a good example of the delicate art of text placement. Particularly on a map.
Posted via Solarbird{y|z|yz}, Collected.
Greater Northshore Bike Connector Map 1.7.1 – 1 June 2025 – is now available on github, as is MEGAMAP 1.7.1.
Additions and changes since 1.7:
All permalinks continue to work.
If you enjoy these maps and feel like throwing some change at the tip jar, here’s my patreon. Patreon supports get things like pre-sliced printables of the Greater Northshore, and also the completely-uncompressed MEGAMAP, not that the .jpg has much compression in it because it doesn’t.
Thank you! ^_^
Posted via Solarbird{y|z|yz}, Collected.
Greater Northshore Bike Connector Map 1.6.1 – 3 May 2025 – is now available on github, as is MEGAMAP 1.6.1.
This release wasn’t supposed to happen yet – arguably at all, the next was supposed to be 1.7 – but I mislabelled a couple of blocks of split sharrow/bike lane in Snohomish County as full both-sides bike lanes and that’s not okay. I had to get that fixed, and I have, so: new maps drop. Corrections are in all latest maps, of course.
Additions and changes since 1.6:
All permalinks continue to work.
If you enjoy these maps and feel like throwing some change at the tip jar, here’s my patreon. Patreon supports get things like pre-sliced printables of the Greater Northshore, and also the completely-uncompressed MEGAMAP, not that the .jpg has much compression in it because it doesn’t. If you have an iPhone, please use the website interface and not the app, because Apple takes 30% if you use the app. I’ll keep doing this regardless, but you know. Thank you! ^_^
Posted via Solarbird{y|z|yz}, Collected.
Greater Northshore Bike Connector Map 1.6 – 18 April 2025 – is now available on github, as is MEGAMAP 1.6.
Additions and changes since 1.5.1:
All permalinks continue to work.
If you enjoy these maps and feel like throwing some change at the tip jar, here’s my patreon. Patreon supports get things like pre-sliced printables of the Greater Northshore, and also the completely-uncompressed MEGAMAP, not that the .jpg has much compression in it because it doesn’t. If you have an iPhone, please use the website interface and not the app, because Apple takes 30% if you use the app. I’ll keep doing this regardless, but you know. Thank you! ^_^
Posted via Solarbird{y|z|yz}, Collected.
Okay, been pretty burnt out this week, so have a beta Version 1.6 bike map [Edit: Here’s the latest Maps Release, download this instead!]. The Greater Northshore now goes up to 200th in Snohomish County, and the MEGAMAP expanded edition will go up to 194th.
This marks the first time that the MEGAMAP edition expands both to the north and the south over the core map. Neat?
This further expansion north was prompted by actually biking up there a little more. if I really want to be able to say that I’m including Lynnwood City Centre, I have to go up to at least 200th, and really, should include both sides of 196th.
Unfortunately, going up to 194th on the smaller map would make it too big for casual printing purposes. But since 196th doesn’t have any sort of bike support, I figure I can leave it off that version.
Even so – even with only going up to 200th – I’ve had to trim a bit off the south in order to stay on my own 17.5″ tall paper. This matters because I really want to be able to print the smaller map on three sheets of paper, and not have to cut and assemble six page. But between very careful placement of text on the north edge, and the addition of a new category of conditional text along the south edge – placing words like “to UW via Burke-Gilman” and “Woodland Park Zoo” and “Redmond Town Centre” with arrows as appropriate – I think I’m managing to keep the usefulness at the about the same level.
I hope so, anyway.
As always, love some test reactions. Here’s the beta. I’ll be dropping a release pretty soon, so, idk, get it in while you can, and thanks.
Posted via Solarbird{y|z|yz}, Collected.
I’m finally expanding the Greater Northshore and MEGAMAP the extra mile or so into Snohomish County as I’ve been promising. This expansion gets users to Edmonds and Lynnwood Town Centre – including the light rail station – so there’s some real meaning to it. In the east, it’ll eventually be important for the expansion of the Rail Trail, too.
Sometimes, tho’, when you’re doing stuff like this, you discover something. That happened tonight.
Check out this incomplete little map section-in-progress. There’s something to infer from it:
The crossings of Highway 99 at 208th and 228th have weight. Cyclists use them, even where the infrastructure stops short of the highway. They’re okay with both.
But they don’t use 220th. That’s fine – 220th interacts badly with I-5 not much further to the east, and has no infrastructure east of Highway 99 anyway. Of course they don’t use it.
212th, on the other hand, doesn’t have those problems. Infrastructure on both sides, even if a little short on the east. No I-5 issues.
And yet, people DO NOT WANT TO CROSS there. They REALLY don’t. They want to go half a mile or more out of their way north and cross at 208th, or a mile and a half out of their way south and use 228th instead.
It’s very specific to the crossing, too. They do use the infrastructure on 212th, on both sides. It lights up on the heatmaps, nice and bright.
But they don’t leave it. They don’t cross 99. Not there. They go north. Or maybe south, but mostly north.
And I can’t for the life of me tell you why. Not from looking at the maps I have. The intersections at 212th and 208th seem much the same to me, even from streetview. Infrastructure’s a little more complete at 208th, but not all that much – what’s half a city block between friends?
And yet.
People who bike there, they know something. Something I don’t, and something I can’t see on a map or from a satellite.
Neat, eh?
I wonder what they know.
Posted via Solarbird{y|z|yz}, Collected.
Greater Northshore Bike Connector Map 1.5.1 – 8 March 2025 – is now available on github, as is MEGAMAP 1.5.1.
Additions and changes since 1.5:
All permalinks continue to work.
If you enjoy these maps and feel like throwing some change at the tip jar, here’s my patreon. Patreon supports get things like pre-sliced printables of the Greater Northshore, and also the completely-uncompressed MEGAMAP, not that the .jpg has much compression in it because it doesn’t. If you have an iPhone, please use the website interface and not the app, because Apple takes 30% if you use the app. I’ll keep doing this regardless, but you know. Thank you! ^_^
Posted via Solarbird{y|z|yz}, Collected.
Greater Northshore Bike Connector Map 1.5 – 21 February 2025 – is now available on github, as is MEGAMAP 1.5.
With this version, the Greater Northshore Map has adopted our MEGAMAP’s former Empty Quarter, previously a basically empty paste-in of King County Regional Trails. It is now a peer map section with Greater Northshore proper, City of Seattle, and 2 Line Eastside Bike Connector.
There may not be a lot down there, but what’s down there is now properly mapped and included.
Additions and changes since 1.4.6:
All permalinks continue to work.
If you enjoy these maps and feel like throwing some change at the tip jar, here’s my patreon. Patreon supports get things like pre-sliced printables of the Greater Northshore, and also the completely-uncompressed MEGAMAP, not that the .jpg has much compression in it because it doesn’t. If you have an iPhone, please use the website interface and not the app, because Apple takes 30% if you use the app. I’ll keep doing this regardless, but you know. Thank you! ^_^
Posted via Solarbird{y|z|yz}, Collected.
So I got my first note on the blog’s bike map contact page, which is amazing, and they threw me some info about the bike lanes on Coal Creek Parkway in Newcastle being usable.
Now, that’s not part of my map, right? That’s a chunk of King County Regional Trails, put in the MEGAMAP pretty much just to solve a blank space on the poster and complete the Lake Washington Loop. I had literally considered just filling it with a giant infobox before deciding that was stupid.
I’ve looked at trying to fill it in since then, because it’s so sparse and so empty. The problem has been that I don’t have anybody down there, or even any indication of interest… until now.
Are you down there? Get me the info. Help me out. I do not want to have to try to do this entirely via satellite views. That would suuuuuuuuuuuuuuuck.
Mercer Island, too! If we’re gonna do this we should fukken DO IT
LET’S GOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO
Posted via Solarbird{y|z|yz}, Collected.
Greater Northshore Bike Connector Map 1.4.5 – 13 December 2024 – is now available on github, as is MEGAMAP 1.4.5 a pasteup of Greater Northshore, City of Seattle, 2 Line Eastside Bike Connector, and a little bit of King County Regional Trails to get us all the way to the south end of Lake Washington.
Changes since 1.4.3 (since I apparently never posted about 1.4.4 here?! so you get a double-dose):
All permalinks continue to work.
If you enjoy these maps and feel like throwing some change at the tip jar, here’s my patreon. Patreon supports get things like pre-sliced printables of the Greater Northshore, and also the completely-uncompressed MEGAMAP, not that the .jpg has much compression in it because it doesn’t. If you have an iPhone, please use the website interface and not the app, because Apple takes 30% if you use the app. I’ll keep doing this regardless, but you know. Thank you! ^_^
Posted via Solarbird{y|z|yz}, Collected.
November 16th, 2023, was the day I started logging biking miles per hundred on Mastodon. I didn’t check the odometer on the date this year, but it would’ve been around 2940, which means totalling 1,440 miles (2,317 km) in the previous 12 months.
That works out to about 28 miles/45 km a week or 120 miles/193 km per month.
That’s more than Anna and I put on our car combined, which exists pretty much entirely for certain cargo-carrying purposes. Not too bad.
The weather’s pretty good today. Cold, but clear and dry. I should run by the hardware store, pick up some copper and steel wool.
If you don’t know this already, copper is incredibly good for scrubbing oven racks, because it’s softer than the rack metal but harder than food, so it really cuts through whatever might’ve got baked on without scarring the metal underneath.
It is absolutely the best way to clean an oven or toaster rack is what I’m saying. I suspect that’ll be an important tip for some of you today, or tomorrow, depending upon how prompt you are about scrubbing up. 😀
Anyway, like I said, it’s a nice day. Let’s go bike.
Posted via Solarbird{y|z|yz}, Collected.
So just before the pandemic, I got an eBike. People who have been following me a while know that I go on bikeposting benders sometimes, too, so here’s your heads up that that can happen lol.
I also maintain the Greater Northshore Bike Connector Map and MEGAMAP, the former a bike map of northwest King County and north Seattle, the latter a combination of maintained bike maps from difference sources that covers from south Snohomish County to the southern tip of Lake Washington. It’s Creative Commons, you can download it at full resolution and even print it if you want.
Despite my main ride being an eBike, the assist stays off most of the time. It’s on when I’ve really got to get somewhere quickly, for the giant hill home that is the reason I bought the thing, etc.
But! I’ve also been using the assist for a starter boost in busy intersections, when I’m on a car road. I’m not really going faster overall when I do this, but dang, do I get started more quickly.
A couple of weeks ago, I decided to try not doing that for a little while. Mostly, I wanted to see if I could build starting power, but partly, I just wanted to see what happened.
And what happened is that automobile drivers instantly because way bigger dicks at me, and intersections got way more dangerous. Not because of the speed, but, again, because of car drivers being much bigger dicks about me being there at all.
This included two cases of people driving into oncoming lanes of traffic deciding to get around me, including one trying to then merge into me after doing so, even though when they did it I was at or close to the speed limit.
The difference was fucking stark holy shit is what I’m saying.
A few days ago I went back to using boost to get started across intersections, and it’s back to normal.
I’m thinking that something in car drivers’ brains see quick acceleration as “that’s a car” triggering the according respectful behaviour, even though they actually see a bike. And that those same people see slower acceleration as “get that fucking piece of shit off my road” and also behave accordingly, disrespectfully and dangerously, towards the bike.
This is again despite the difference in speed at the halfway point being negligible.
One woman’s playing around with the world at an intersection does not a study make, but damn, it was, as I said, a stark difference. I do wonder if bicycle messengers all figure this out too, and get a rep for it that – surprise! – turns out is as much about personal safety as getting places quickly.
I will definitely continue to use boost to launch across intersections. I can be faster out the gate than a car, and will absolutely continue to be.
Might be something to think about, either as a biker or a driver of a car.
Posted via Solarbird{y|z|yz}, Collected.
Last weekend I took the 3D-printed PHA-filament bike trailer adapter and cargo trailer on as long of a run as I really intend to take it, a trip to another town’s QFC.
The last time I tried it was with this same design, but printed using a fairly cheap PLA filament. The PLA survived all the previous short test trips (including two with actual cargo), but absolutely didn’t make it to this store.
This time had the additional complication of an adventure wherein I went down a handicap curb cut on the way back, but not in the exact middle of the cut. This meant that one of the wheels dropped a a little off the curb as I biked into the roadway. It didn’t drop far – less than half the curb height – but somehow this cause the entire cart to flip over, hard.
I’m still confused about why. I didn’t even have it loaded high or heavily. All it had was half a grocery bag full of frozen veg some cheese, and a couple of other small items, along with three boxes of cereal, held in place with an elastic cargo net. It stacked so low in the cart that I left the roll bar/cover assembly down, lying flat against the sides of the cart, as if it were empty.
And yet, flip! I just don’t know how the fuck that happened.
But! It appeared to be intact, and the bike was okay other than the rear fender getting kicked off centre and having to be aligned back again, so I just flipped it back over, made sure everything was still inside, then biked the rest of the way home and it was okay.
(The bike is definitely fine, I had it out the next day and the day after for a long ride, and no problems.)
Anyway, I finally took the cargo trailer hitch adapter complete off the bike for a proper examination, and the result is…
[Windows TA-DA.wav]
…it’s fine! 100% good. The extra flexibility of PHA really seems to have helped. Either that, or the layer adhesion vs. PLA is as much better as the old Filaments.ca makers claimed. Or could be both. Either way, it’s dramatically more durable.
The soft metal support bracket – the part that makes it the “hybrid” dragon model – bent a little. I straightened it out, and made some adjustments for a slightly better fit. Just to be safe. But it really was fine; I could’ve kept using it as it was.
So as of now this is the production model, I guess! Not that there’s going to be a production run since it’s built for exactly my bike and this cargo carrier, lol, BUT it does seem to work and even with the inexplicable trailer flip came through the long ride completely functional.
Even the little crack I’d talked about before – on a part I’ve since engineered out – turned out not to be a crack. Just a weird printing seam caused by the way I set up the variable infill on the model.
And that really sorts out this project – I think it’s done. Victory again for TAK! I guess. 😀
Posted via Solarbird{y|z|yz}, Collected.
Now incorporating the southern mile-ish of Snohomish County! The idea was 2km but some places it’s barely over a mile. Either way, that means yes, we further enGreatered Northshore, because the actual Snohomish County map is absolutely a trainwreck.
It’s mostly for the Interurban North and North Creek trails but not just that.
Also new since map set 1.2:
URLs have not changed. Enjoy!
Posted via Solarbird{y|z|yz}, Collected.
…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.
Greater Northshore and MEGAMAP Bike Maps version 1.2.2, Mid-June 2024, dropped at the usual place. This is a very minor release.
I don’t see any substantial updates for the next few months; we’re as up-to-date as I think I can get. There is, however, some relevant new construction that falls into the Greater Northshore area, and that’ll get reflected as it comes online.
Changes:
Direct “latest map” links have not changed.
Posted via Solarbird{y|z|yz}, Collected.
UPDATE RELEASE NOTICE for:
The bike part of the bike and sidewalk improvements on 73rd Ave NE in Kenmore are complete! There’s still a little sidewalk work to be done – the elevated sections have railings, but they’re extremely temporary. However, with the bike parts done, that’s good enough for me to show.
Also, both maps have updates to bike shop locations (deleting some in Seattle; adding some in Greater Northshore) and there’s also word correction in the MEGAMAP box.
Direct “latest map” URLs have not changed since the 1.2 release; both maps can be download from github.
Posted via Solarbird{y|z|yz}, Collected.
Housemate printed my map in tiles across eight sheets of 11×17 (roughly A3) paper and I cut them up and glued them together into a poster and got it hung. I’m really quite pleased with it. ^_^
I probably need a proper bike icon for Dreamwidth now – I write these in WordPress, it’s Federated so it goes to the Federation but it also cross-posts to Dreamwidth because that’s how I roll, and it still has per-post user icons which I kinda miss in general. ^_^
Anyway, you know where to find it if you want to grab the file and print your own. FedEx storefronts can print them all on one sheet so you don’t have to break it into tiles and glue it. I’m sure other places can do it too.
Posted via Solarbird{y|z|yz}, Collected.
Okay, I’m calling it: RC1 is Release Version 1.2 of the MEGAMAP, the combined bike map including Greater Northshore, complete Seattle (the “complete” part of that is new), and 2 Link Eastside maps, with also a little chunk from King County Regional Trails to get us all of Lake Washington without leaving a big void presumably labelled “Here There Be Dragons, And Also Renton” as a warning.
The map be LORGE but it also be FAIRLY COMPLETE as bike maps go of Northwest King County, except ironically for the little KC-maintained section. But what that does buy you is the last section of the Lake Washington Loop. So I think it’s worth it.
Anyway, go download, hopefully this is the last update for a little bit. It should be. If I hear of new infrastructure I’ll probably slip in some quiet updates, but it’ll be less of a production – no Beta or RC releases or any of that. Just moar bieks. ^_^
Posted via Solarbird{y|z|yz}, Collected.
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
