What would a dedicate Road & Trail Conditions app/website/service look like?

@chris_s 131417 wrote:

My work on the regional bike map has me mulling over various other potential bike-related, map-related website / apps / services and I got thinking about road & trail conditions. The thought that jumped into my head goes something like this:

Crowdsourced conditions – I image you could report conditions in two different ways:
1) an area report – select a portion of the route & specify an overall condition
2) a specific incident report – drop a pin on a precise location on the route & indicate a particular problem / incident there (tree down / flooded / closed for construction / etc)

Conditions are display on an online (mobile-friendly) map. In addition to just being able to pull up the map to see what reports people have filed, make the data more useful by supporting:
1) daily commute reports – ahead of time, layout your standard commute on the map & pick a particular time to receive an automatic email in your inbox that gives you the last X hours of reports that pertain to your standard commute.
2) emergency reports – pick routes that you care about & get instantaneous notifications if a route you care about is reported as impassable.

Would that be useful? Would it be significantly more useful than the forum thread? What information is most important? How would you want to receive it? Would you contribute?

Waze, but for bikes.* Feel free to make my royalty checks out to CASH.

Not even kidding. The interface is ideal.

Simpler would be better. Something like a map that has an icon that marks obstacles, hazards and other problems. There could be a limited set of easy-to-read icons, to mark common issues such as icy patches, flooded trails, downed trees, car crash injuries and damage, police/Secret Service closures (since this is the DC area) and maybe a couple other categories.

The ice icon could have an icicle or two hanging from a tree branch next to a slick frozen patch. This would have to be simple in order to show up on a mobile-friendly map.

The flooded trail icon could show water above a trail, similar to existing traffic signs that warn of low-lying flood-prone areas.

The police/Secret Service icon could show a police barricade, or a simplified version of one.

But once someone adds these to a map, how long would the icon markers stay in place? Would they disappear after a set time? Or would they need to be removed manually? By users or by an administrator? If the icons aren’t cleared, then the map would fill up with old hazard markers.

If this is too complicated, maybe we could set up a format on the existing Road and Trail Conditions thread to make those easier to read? Those threads contain off-topic or marginally-related messages. What about if hazard warning posts always start off with the name of the location in bold type and all caps? Then a more detailed description of the problem could follow. For example, something like this:

MVT/GRAVELLY POINT – 1/23/2018, 8 am

Downed tree, 100 ft. north of the airplane viewing area. Blocking the entire trail. NPS has been notified.

This would make the thread easier to read for people who want to see hazard/obstacle warnings quickly before they head off to work/school/other.

@chris_s 132851 wrote:

Anybody want to be a guinea pig? Seems like a good weekend for trial by fire.

The #bikedc crowd-sourced regional trail and road conditions map

It’s a very rough beta, but functional.

It was functional the first time I tried it right after you posted this. But the next time I looked, a couple of days ago, all I get is a big, blank page. Same’s true today.

Nick

@chris_s 133590 wrote:

Let’s start by trying a password reset (which yes, I know isn’t actually linked from anywhere right now)

I think I was able to log in yesterday after resetting the password. But I’m getting the same error message again now: “Invalid login attempt.”

Maybe something is happening with the browser autofill on the login page. Instead of my email address, the field is automatically populated with my username. I manually change it to my email address. I also type the password manually, in case autofill throws off the login for some reason. That still doesn’t work.

I see a blank page in Firefox ESR 38.2.0

Errors below:

“[CustomizableUI]” “Custom widget with id loop-button does not return a valid node” CustomizableUI.jsm:167
…
“Failed to initialize WebGL” mapbox-gl.js:160:7483
“Activity Stream Update Timer Started” vbulletin_activitystream.js:11:2210
“Failed to initialize WebGL” mapbox-gl.js:160:7483
[80] [80] dcbikemap.com:115

Map loads up in IE though. Shudder.