Feedback: recent update to heatmaps makes creating routes difficult

[robpmcadam]

UPDATE FROM STRAVA:

Thanks so much for writing in and providing this feedback. This is something that we are aware of and currently looking into. We're actively working on solving this gap in user experience and weighing this feedback into consideration as we work on an update. We appreciate your time and patience.

a recent feature seems to have filtered heatmaps based on the sport type when routing. i suspect that this is broadly a great feature, but it has now made gravel routing very difficult because of the data sparsity (a large % of people don't select "gravel ride" on their activities, most rides aren't gravel anyways, etc.). plus there's so much overlap in gravel and road routes anyways, so aggregating that data makes sense imo.

the road heatmaps work great here, but the only way to get them to show up is to change the sport type to road cycling, which affects the routing. I prefer to use "gravel ride" as the sport to get good autorouting ("prefer dirt" has its issues since it always wants to send me on hiking trails instead of just doing the logical thing..). most of the heatmaps around me are pretty much empty for gravel routing, so my workaround was to switch between sports when routing so I can view the heat map, but this became a pretty crappy workstream to make routes. im having to move to ridewithgps until this gets cleaned up. im pretty bummed too, because ive generally preferred Strava for routing, and I now have to learn a new workstream for the time being.

my suggestion would be to allow users to toggle data for the heatmaps (eg I can show an aggregated heat map of road, gravel, mtb activities) when routing.

[Abeplay]

Why doesn't global heatmap work anymore?

When i choose MAPS i want to se all the heatmaps around me but it doesn't anymore, why?

Is there any problems here?

[Bruce]

Hi @robpmcadam 

Thanks so much for writing in and providing this feedback. This is something that we are aware of and currently looking into. We're actively working on solving this gap in user experience and weighing this feedback into consideration as we work on an update. We appreciate your time and patience.

[cab]

Thanks Rob,

I think a simple fix would be to give an option to select All Sports and All Cycle Sports heatmaps, as well as Recent (eg 1 Year) and All Time.

Unfortunately the latest update has made the Route builder pretty much useless in my area.

Hoping this can be updated soon or reverted back to the previous version.

Many thanks

[creeper]

Hello!

I noticed some heatmap option changes in recent Strava updates. In the Maps section, there are more sports available, which is a good new feature, and there is also an option for combining similar sports - for example "All cycle sports"... Unfortunately this option is not available in the My Routes section when creating new routes. There I can only choose Ride or Mountain Bike Ride (and only corresponding Heatmap is displayed) and cannot enable All cycle sports. In the current situation I cannot have all of my cycling history routes displayed on the personal heatmap when creating new routes which was a very useful feature and was available in the last versions of Strava.

Is there an option for returning "All cycle sports" feature in the Create new route section?

Thank you very much!

Samo Granda

[jonasja]

After the latest update on the mobile app, the global heatmap now filters on the current activity only (it used to show all sports before this update).

For areas with low activity the old "all sports" was crucial to show any heat at all. I would prefer that you kept "all sports" in the list with the other items (ride, run, walk etc.).

[DouglasDDX]

With the latest updates to the route builder it seems that personal and global heatmap shows by activity only.

This doesn't work when creating gravel rides. Because if I take "gravel ride" as the sport type. I basically get no global heatmap and can't find new routes (because almost everyone keeps their activity as a "ride" instead of changing to gravel or mtb?).

If I choose "ride" instead. I get most of the global heatmap showing and can find new routes. However, with "ride" its wants to redirect my way to asphalt roads all the time. And i can't see my personal heatmap for gravel either.

Gravel rideRidegravel personal heatmapride personal heatmap

As you can see, on the other side of the sea (denmark instead of sweden) cycling is a lot more common and you can actually see the gravel global heatmap..

I'm going on a gravel trip at other places in sweden soon. And now its impossible to create gravel routes due to this. Please add "all rides" to sport type or reverse back to how it was a couple of weeks ago. So we can enjoy the route builder instead of having to change to another software for making routes.

[Kalisov]

I don't think changing the heatmap with type of activity in the route builder was a good idea... At least let me see heatmap from "all activities" or something. And it seems it's not only affects personal heatmap but global heatmap as well. IMO Changing heatmap visibility settings should be separate from activity type. 

[Kalisov]

I have a go-around for this problem if someone's interested: You can sync your Strava activities with StatsHunters, install StatsHunters extension in your browser, and with the extenstion you can "apply" your whole heatmap from all of your activities in the strava route builder. 

[DouglasDDX]

Yes it kind of helped to change the surface to dirt but I still have to use Ride to see the gravel roads, therefore I don't see my own gravel heatmap.

The problem is just as mmkko explains. And to have the option to select multiple ride types would solve it quickly. But also create other problems such as sorting your rides based by road or gravel under my routes.

It seems like strava hasn't really tested this before implementing. Frustrating as it wasn't a problem before!!