Bike suitability maps - Atlanta - Cycling Mob: Road Cycling, Mountain Biking and More

02-23-2005, 09:41 AM

Looking for a route to ride to work, or looking to find a safe road
ride? Have you ever thought about riding your bike to the mountain bike
trail instead of driving? The Atlanta Regional Commission (ARC) has
some great bike suitability maps on their website to help you out with
your road route. This is a very extensive set of maps that covers all
the counties inside the perimeter and many outside of it. They've
created the maps using the ArcGIS suite, so they are fairly advanced.
There is an online color version with zoom capability that you can view
with Acrobat reader. Select the county map you're interested in and
be sure to go to page 2 in order to see the detailed map. The roads are
color coded green, yellow, and orange based on how safe the roads are
for biking. Green roads are the safest and orange are the most
difficult. Here is the link to the online county maps.
([Only registered and activated users can see links. ])

I've used the maps for several big rides and commuting routes, and
found them very useful. Using the maps I was able to find a route from
Perimeter Mall up to the Big Creek trails in Alpharetta. The one thing
that I feel the maps are missing is that they don't show some of the
smaller cut through roads. The maps tend to focus more on the major
roads that are usually plagued with Atlanta traffic. I like the roads
detail on the Emory bike suitability map. If you live near or around
Emory this is a great resource.
([Only registered and activated users can see links. ].)

I'm currently working on a bike mapping software. This stuff is really
advanced, and will allow users to enter a beginning and ending address
for a Mapquest like display of the safest bike route. The prototype
will cover the same roads as the Emory bike suitability map, but our
goal is to cover the same counties that the ARC has already mapped.
This is a big initiative but I think it will be a powerful tool in
giving Atlanta residents an option other than sitting in a car in
traffic.

If you are interested in some of the bike/pedestrian initiatives going
on at the ARC you will probably want to visit this
site.([Only registered and activated users can see links. ])