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.

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.

There simply is not enough rides marked as gravel rides, not all set the ride type in their device or in Strava afterwards. You should at least have an option to select multiple ride types, like you do in the separate map page (which I have no clue what it is there for). So the heatmap shows nothing for gravel. Also the surface type option is of no use for gravel riding. At least around here it takes you to mountain bike trails regardless of difficulty so you have to manually check every bit of your route if you want to ride instead of push your bike. Just cancelled my subscription because of this. Frustrated with the constant changes for the worse.

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!!

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. 

for example, here is what the heatmap looks like for a very popular gravel segment in our area, mt riga road

Hello @robpmcadam 

Thanks for providing this feedback. I'll ask our Team to review your comments.

In the meantime, for best results, please ensure you've selected "prefer dirt surfaces" under routing preferences when planning a gravel ride:

thanks Jane!

and re prefer dirt surfaces: my experience here is that generally 1) it puts me on a bunch of non-rideable hiking trails 2) makes silly routing decisions like eg instead of going 1 mi on pavement, it will go 5 miles out of the way on dirt. selecting "gravel ride" instead tends to give more of the desired behavior of routing on dirt roads that are commonly ridden while connecting things with pavement as needed.

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.).

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

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.

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

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?

This is great that the Heatmaps on the main maps works, but how come we can't see all of our activities while creating a route?

For example I can see everywhere I've ever been when just viewing the map, but when in the Route Creator I can only see one sport layer at a time. Can we please add the selection option that is "all sports" like there is in the Heatmap?

This is the heatmap, it has the option to see every sport type.

There should be that same option while creating routes!

I do agree. 

It has gotten worse with the separation of 'run' and 'trail run'. Since the majority of my runs (over 500) were on trails, but I logged them as 'run' I see nothing on the personal heat map when trying to create a route based of of that. I also want to see my hike since I often also scout areas in preparation for long runs.

I sometimes change the route creation activity, while building routes, to see also the global heat map. In remote areas of the world for example it helps me to find running tracks based on the cycling global map. The problem with that is that is than re-calculates and changes the already created part of the route...

The data is already there, we just need the switches to add our own layers of interest (hike / walk / run / swimming....).

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. 

​@Lars_A Did you add this into ideas so that we can vote on it ?

When are we getting a fix for this? Personally, this is really a deal breaker for continuing using strava or not

I’m wondering too when will heatmaps for gravel rides be useful again. It seems rather forward to add the “normal” ride heatmap and remove the paved parts. And instead of a fix we get new heatmaps for nights and weeks, so it isn’t down to developer resources, only to bad management decisions.