Route planning and heat map filtering by bike type or tyre size

[Almond50]

Problem

Filtering on route planning and heat map doesn’t allow for detailed understanding of the road types. 

Details

Route planning for a bike ride will currently allow you to filter by paved roads, unpaved etc but for a road cyclist just because it’s paved doesn’t mean it is good to cycle on. 
I have moved to a new area recently and I don’t know the roads well. Creating routes on Strava I have often been taken onto to paved roads but of poor quality. 
A paved road may be good for commuting on comfy tyres but on a racing bike be unsuitable. 
Traffic on paved roads will also differ and is not taken into consideration when route planning or on heat maps. 

Solution 

Increased filtering options. 
It would good to be able to filter the global heat map by more precise criteria. This would allow a user to see the heat map most relevant for the type of ride they are doing.

By defining more criteria about your ride on the route planner it will allow a more suitable route to be created. 

•  Filtering by the type of bike used will allow a user to differentiate between roads that are popular with commuters and those that are popular with road cyclists.
• An extra section could be added to “Your Gear” to allow a user to add their tyre size. This could then allow filtering on heat map and route planning by the tyre size. 
• Filter by average speed of all users on that road. A higher average speed is likely to show that a road is not full of traffic lights or pedestrians etc that slow a rider down indicating it’s more suitable for road cyclists. 
  
• Segment reviews. Users could be promoted to rate segments out of 10 based on pre defined criteria. This could be quality of the road surface, traffic levels, scenery etc. This would allow Strava to collect more precise data on individual roads and allow users to create routes that included the most suitable segments for their ride. 

[Soren]

Thanks for submitting your idea. It has been reviewed by our moderation team and is now open to voting.

I'd like to point out that we just launched an improvement where when you look at a suggested route, it will populate 10 of the most recent activities that correspond to it, as long as the activities have their privacy controls opted in to share their activities. When going to the maps tab in the mobile app > routes > select a route > see details > scroll down till you see "Recent Activities". This provides additional insight via the descriptions, photos, data such as speed, time to complete the route, etc. We will continue to make improvements to this feature and your feedback is much appreciated.

[RafK]

I had the very same idea. Thanks for posting. 

[Dennis]

When I was just planning my route I looked for the option to edit the Global Heatmap by applying the Surface data as a filter. It was not there. But it looks like someone already had this great idea! 

However, the solution of @Almond50 may be a bit too complicated or specific. As a simplified solution to the original stated problem above, you can combine two already known data sets, Heatmap and Surface, to create a filter.

Suggestion:
In the route planner, create a drop-down-menu on "Global Heatmap" that show the same options you have for the Surfaces area:

• Show paved roads
• Show unpaved road
• Show all surfaces

Like here in Dutch: