Heatmaps - date filter

[nicrennet]

Would it be possible to introduce a time filter to heatmaps so that trails that fall out of favour fade out?

I live in an area surrounded by forests and use the heatmap facility extensively to find new routes to run / cycle off the main fire trails. However, due to forestry work over recent months and years and the inaccessibility of some routes due to tree growth, this has become an increasingly unreliable way to plan a run - routes that were popular can now no-longer be navigated.

I would propose at least a 12-month rolling filter (a bit like the rolling 90-days for local legend) to ensure that all seasons are captured.

[nicky]

Hi @p1ersson thanks for this suggestion. We're working on some tools that will help with this exact use case. Stay tuned for more updates in the next few months! Appreciate you taking the time to write in! 

[p1ersson]

For example currently - wathcing todays track of skating where people has been recenlty is one tool to help see what parts of lakes have what quality. Filtering global heatmap for a range (in my case now: todays) would be a useful tool

[nicky · Accepted solution]

Hey @nicrennet thanks for writing in here. Totally appreciate the use case (and would like to have this capability myself too!) The heatmap currently captures the trailing 13 months, but we agree that more specific filtering would be very helpful. We have a number of significant updates to our heatmap feature-set planned for this year and will take this suggestion into our planning. Please let me know if you have any other needs the heatmaps are not currently meeting! 

[meb]

It would be immensely helpful to be able to filter out the most popular 1, 3, 7, X days across a given road or trail to avoid being biased toward building routes that are popular for specific events (e.g., races), but not recreational activities.

Specifically, bike races or bike tours often occur with closed roads and police blocking intersections, but it would be awesome to be able to filter the heat map map in a way that removes heat from such activities.

Specifically around New York City, one can’t ride across the Tappan Zee Bridge but the layperson wouldn’t know that based on looking at the cycling data of the heatmap (since they close it down to vehicles for the five boro bike tour). Beyond inconveniences like that, there’s arguably some safety concern of users, creating routes on open trafficked roads that were popular at times without vehicle traffic.

On the same vein time of day filtering could be useful, particularly from a safety standpoint for cycling.

[nicky]

Hi @meb thanks for the message. We are working on some additional heatmap filtering tools that should help you solve the problems and get the information you're looking for here. Stay tuned for some updates coming to the web heatmap in the next few months. Appreciate you taking the time to write in! 

[meb]

thanks Nicky! looking forward to it. appreciate all  your work making strava great

[nicky]

@meb thank you - looking forward to hearing how you like the coming updates