Strava can't tell the difference between two tracks that are side by side

[JZA89]

I often ride at bike parks where there might be 5 or 6 trails all starting at the same point and ending at the same point but they are distinct trails and yet Strava cannot determine which one I was on. On the map it shows the trails (i.e. Strava maps is aware that there are multiple trails in this location and even shows the names of the trails) and my GPS track lines up almost perfectly with the trail and yet Strava still thinks I did the trail beside it which does not line up with my GPS track at all, except for the start and end points. Why does Strava only look at the start and end points of a trail instead of matching the mid points as well?

The trail network that I am talking about is called Sticky Forest in Wanaka, New Zealand. There are lots of trails that all start in similar locations and then all end in the same spot. The trails are all on Strava maps and when I ride them, my tracks line up with the trails on the maps, plus or minus a metre or two here and there, but they do line up very well and it's VERY clear just by looking at it which trail I was riding. So why does Strava think I rode the next trail over which I very clearly was not. My GPS track doesn't even touch the other trail except for at the very start and end points. 

Also another problem is that all of these trails are very short, some of which only take about 1.5 minutes to complete. In the past we could make segments for all of these on Strava but now Strava has set these arbitrary limits of 500m minimum which means that a lot of these trails cannot be loaded on to Strava even if they are 490m long. GPS is so much more accurate than it was 5 years ago. My Multiband GPS device gives me pin point tracks even when I'm riding under trees and as I said earlier, they line up very closely with the trails on the Strava map so why are we still working with the same segment mapping software that we had 5+ years ago? C'mon Strava, you need to rework the software so it can determine which trail you were on, not just from the start and end points but from points along the trail as well. 

[Jane · Accepted solution]

Hi @JZA89 

Thanks for your post. Certain kinds of segments work better on Strava than others.

When two trail segments (or a trail and a road segment) runs parallel to each other, it may not be possible for Strava to provide mutually exclusive results. This is because our system allows for a small margin of error to account for GPS drift. Athletes riding or running on one segment may match (and receive unrealistic times) on the other segment, and vice versa. Unfortunately, if the two segments are close enough together for this to be an issue, the only way to improve your chances for accurate matches is to move the segment endpoints further away.

We also don't recommend very short segments on Strava, as they may give less accurate results than longer segments.

I recommend reviewing the information at this link to find out more what kinds of segments work best on Strava. 

[JZA89]

If the system "allows for a small margin of error" and this results in matching two trails that are side by side even though I only rode one of those trails then I should be able to tell Strava that it is wrong and remove the incorrectly identified trail from my ride OR adjust the segment recognition to say "No Strava I did not ride trail X, I rode trail Y". Currently the only way to remove a Segment from a ride is to hide it but then this permanently hides it from all future rides. What if I do sometimes ride Trail X but I didn't on this particular ride so I don't want to hide it permanently, I just want to remove it from THIS ride because it was incorrectly identified.

See the screenshot attached. This is from my ride on Monday. I rode Yumpts and Strava correctly identified this, however Strava ALSO said that I rode Stumpy. As you can see, my GPS track is not even close to Stumpy except for the start and end points (sorry the end is cut off from the image. I had to zoom in a long way for the trail names to show up). So at the end of the ride I am looking at my ride on Strava, and the trails that it identified, and I see both Yumpts AND Stumpy on there and I am thinking "Did I ride Stumpy? I'm pretty sure I didn't. I only rode Yumpts" and then I check the map and sure enough I was correct BUT Strava does not give me any option to remove Stumpy from my ride EXCEPT for the hide button but this permanently removes it from all of my rides which is not what I want. 

So in summary we need two things from Strava:

1) We need to be able to correct Strava when it gets it wrong. This means I can remove a segment if it was incorrectly identified. I can add a segment if Strava didn't correctly recognise it (this will require the software to check so people cant just add any segment). I can modify a segment if it thought that I did Trail X instead of Trail Y. 

2) We need Strava to not only look at the start and end points of a trail but also points along the trail. If Strava split the trail into 4 sub-segments then there would be 5 data points (GPS pings) along the trail that Strava can use to identify which trail/segment you are actually on. This would solve 90% of all incorrectly identified segments (take my example below: If Strava looked at 5 points along the trail it would easily recognise that I was NOT on Stumpy, I was on Yumpts). Even better, split the segment into 100 sub-segments and then we will have some seriously good accuracy to prevent incorrect identification of parallel trails. 

[Jan_Mantau]

If you mean Strava segments with "Strava still thinks I did the trail" then this is a necessary feature in order to match segments because not all people have multiband GPS or have enabled it. It's usually better to match a segment you didn't do as to not match a segment you did do because the last one would lead to much grief when someone did an all out.

[JZA89]

Then why don’t we have the ability to tell Strava that we did or didn’t do a segment? Currently there is no way to remove a segment from your ride without permanently hiding it. For example I rode at Sticky forest on Monday and I rode “Yumpts” and Strava recognised this but it also said that I rode “Stumpy” which is the trail next door. I can’t tell Strava that I didn’t ride Stumpy, the only option is to hide it but then it is permanently hidden which I don’t want to do because I do ride Stumpy sometimes. Stravas tools and software is just budget. 

[Jane]

Hi @JZA89 

Thanks for your feedback on this. We have an existing feature suggestion over on our Ideas Board on this very topic.  You can view it here, and we would welcome your vote any any additional comments you would like to add.