Travel Mapping
User Discussions => Other Discussion => Topic started by: kjslaughter on March 15, 2021, 12:05:37 pm
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Curiosity question. How does everyone consider a route to be travelled? Do you have to be the one driving the car? Do you count if you are just a passenger? Or at an extreme level, would you count a route travelled if you were on a bus?
Personally, if I was in the vehicle on the road, I count it, be it me driving my car, passenger, taxi or bus. That method means I'm including a trip to Arkansas when I was 2 years old 40 years ago, but it's lifetime travels, right?
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I count all of those. Almost all of my clinched routes are ones from my teenage years or more recent, so I have at least some recollection. But not all. For example, I haven't been on a good chunk of I-80 in western Nebraska and I-76 in Colorado since I was 6 years old and was probably asleep in the back seat for much of that ride.
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Curiosity question. How does everyone consider a route to be travelled? Do you have to be the one driving the car? Do you count if you are just a passenger? Or at an extreme level, would you count a route travelled if you were on a bus?
Heck, I would include walking the route. That's how I've covered some temporary route gaps in North America, and also some routes within downtown London's "congestion zone" where I couldn't drive my rental car. Also, the only routes I've traveled in Italy (except as a baby, since I have no way of figuring out how my family in 1957 got from Rome's old airport to Naples) were in a taxi from one of Milan's airports, and a bus to the other airport.
We map one route in Michigan (state route 185, an eight-mile loop around Mackinac Island) that is off-limits to motor vehicles except emergency vehicles or other rare exceptions. More than two dozen of our users have clinched it, by horse-drawn carriage, on a bicycle, and/or on foot.
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I would include walking the route.
Me too!
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Do you count if you are just a passenger? Or at an extreme level, would you count a route travelled if you were on a bus?
Not particularly sure why being a passenger in a bus is more extreme than as a passenger in a car - its fundamentally the same thing. The other passengers?
I've got travels walking, cycling, as a passenger (inc in a bus). I would have at least a segment in 'extreme' ways such as walking backwards, running, riding in a shopping cart but I've got those segments more normal ways anyway.
There will be segments I travelled in a pushchair, asleep, but either I haven't added them as I don't know quite what they were, or I've re-travelled them.some routes within downtown London's "congestion zone" where I couldn't drive my rental car.
I imagine because it would have been a breach of Terms and Conditions? I can see why - foreign driver doesn't pay the charge, rental company gets a fine, can't easily just charge it to the card.
I think, when I was little (about 5 or 6), I went inside that area (before it was a thing) in a car, but all my travels mapped (and I've got about 90% - just some B roads untravelled) within the Congestion Charge Zone (and most of those in the area outside it) are on-foot.
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Curiosity question. How does everyone consider a route to be travelled? Do you have to be the one driving the car? Do you count if you are just a passenger? Or at an extreme level, would you count a route travelled if you were on a bus?
Heck, I would include walking the route. That's how I've covered some temporary route gaps in North America, and also some routes within downtown London's "congestion zone" where I couldn't drive my rental car. Also, the only routes I've traveled in Italy (except as a baby, since I have no way of figuring out how my family in 1957 got from Rome's old airport to Naples) were in a taxi from one of Milan's airports, and a bus to the other airport.
We map one route in Michigan (state route 185, an eight-mile loop around Mackinac Island) that is off-limits to motor vehicles except emergency vehicles or other rare exceptions. More than two dozen of our users have clinched it, by horse-drawn carriage, on a bicycle, and/or on foot.
I have had times where I walked the route because it was closed for an event in a town back when we had those pre-COVID.
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As long as I'm within 10 feet of the surface of the road, it doesn't matter if I'm in the driver's seat, the passenger seat, or in a double decker bus, that means I traveled the route. On AARoads people were trying to claim clinched counties that they flew over. That's madness.
I've traveled pretty extensively internationally and I wouldn't have most of those routes if I didn't count being in a car someone else was driving.
Chris
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On AARoads people were trying to claim clinched counties that they flew over. That's madness.
Did they not read the Mob-Rule home page? (http://mob-rule.com/home)
The rules are simple: you visit a county, then you count it. To visit a county, just cross the plane of the county line. Usually, you visit a county in a car, but it is possible to visit counties by biking, hiking, or even skiing. Generally, we don't count flying over a county, especially flying in a commercial jet airplane (it's just too hard to see the signs that say "Entering Beaufort County").
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Did they not read the Mob-Rule home page? (http://mob-rule.com/home)
The rules are simple: you visit a county, then you count it. To visit a county, just cross the plane of the county line. Usually, you visit a county in a car, but it is possible to visit counties by biking, hiking, or even skiing. Generally, we don't count flying over a county, especially flying in a commercial jet airplane (it's just too hard to see the signs that say "Entering Beaufort County").
My thoughts exactly! And here's my map for reference: http://www.mob-rule.com/user-gifs/USA/kjslaughter.gif
On TripAdvisor, there is a city visited map option. Look under member profile and then Travel Map if you haven't done this. My sister and I made separate rules for that. Airport layovers don't count and to count a visit to a city we decided your feet have to touch the ground. So driving through Shreveport only counts if you stop and buy gas.
And I was listing buses as extreme because I know when on bus trips as a teen at least that you would be distracted by multiple things and not really paying attention to the route and sites along it. Some of y'all's examples are definitely more extreme than what I was thinking!
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For me, the mode of transit isn't important. What matters is knowing I traveled a particular road segment.
The majority of my mapped travels on this site were done in a car, either mine or a rental, and more often than not, I was driving solo. I do have a few places where I was the passenger in someone's car or a taxi. Likewise there are a handful where I was in a bus.
There are some routes that I have traversed, but without being able to definitively say the exact route, those are not included. I'm pretty sure my family drove along CA1 between LA and SFO when I was a kid as I remember stopping at San Simeon. Unfortunately, without knowing the starting and ending points or where we might have deviated from the route, I've only included the parts of the PCH I have driven myself.
How I traveled a stretch of road isn't important. As long as I know I covered a route by some means, it's in.
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I'll also add that I have to be pretty sure when it's old travels. For example, in 1978 we made our first family trip to Florida. I know that either on that trip or another in subsequent years, we took US 1 all the way to the end, so I count that. I think there were still gaps in I-95 and I-75 that probably meant we traveled some stretches of US 1, US 17, US 41, etc. that I can't really verify, so I don't include those unless I've knowingly traveled them myself since. This includes an irksome chunk of US 41 between Port Charlotte and Venice that I just can't seem to justify taking, despite dozens of trips to SWFL via I-75 through that area over the last couple of decades. I'd say there's a 90% chance we drove it in 1978.
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Far as I'm concern any method counts....EXCEPT THE FOLLOWING
- Google Streetview/Google Earth
- Air travel (already mentioned above)
- Drone video
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I'll also add that I have to be pretty sure when it's old travels.
Yeah, my trip when I was 2 to Arkansas is listed only because I asked my dad what route we would have taken and he told me across US 82 from Birmingham. In hindsight, I'm guessing a bunch of that route has rerouted onto bypasses since 1979. Maybe if and when Mississippi state highways are added I'll go back and adjust the route to be more accurate. Similar story for US 331 between Montgomery and Destin, though I have travelled big chunks of that route myself since then.
Thankfully, once I was older like 8 and up, my love of maps made me the navigator on vacation so I am much more sure of all other family vacation routes. :-)
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I count routes only if I'm driving myself. I don't like my stats to be incomplete, and I cannot remember exactly all the roads my father drove when I was a kid in the backseat.
But yes, in principle I would count also biking or walking, as long as I do that firsthand. Until now, though, it never happened that I biked or walked a road that I didn't drive on.
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I only count it when driving myself, although I have created another list file of clinched roads with other methods (as passenger, bus, etc.). I'm just not sure if I'm allowed to have two files on the database so I did not upload.
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I'm just not sure if I'm allowed to have two files on the database so I did not upload.
Sure! You only need a unique list file name.
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I'm unfussy about the details of how I traveled the road so long as I traveled it. Yes it counts if I was not the one driving. Yes it counts if walked or biked. Yes it counts if it was at night. Yes it counts if I am not old enough to actually remember the trip but know I was there. Yes it counts if I was asleep for the ride. Yes it counts if I traveled the road back when it had a different number, or when it was just an unnumbered local road before any route shields were put up.
I am even so bold as to say "same ROW same difference", such that I consider driving along a freeway frontage road to be valid for clinching that section of the freeway (and vice versa) so long as they are adjacent without development between them. And my claimed clinch of Allen Road (https://travelmapping.net/hb/showroute.php?units=miles&u=duke87&r=on.allrd) comes from having ridden the subway line that runs in the median of it.
Where I will get fussy is that if the route is realigned to a nontrivial degree: I will consider it a declinch in such cases, which results in annoyances such as this (https://travelmapping.net/hb/showroute.php?units=miles&u=duke87&r=in.us050&lat=39.008713&lon=-85.644436&zoom=13) (I had US 50 entirely clinched east of the Kansas City until INDOT went and moved it...). That said it has to be a substantial realignment such as the road being moved out of town onto a bypass. If it's moved onto a new bridge that was built next to the old one, or if an intersection is relocated by a few hundred feet, etc. I will comfortably ignore these things.
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I am even so bold as to say "same ROW same difference", such that I consider driving along a freeway frontage road to be valid for clinching that section of the freeway (and vice versa) so long as they are adjacent without development between them. And my claimed clinch of Allen Road (https://travelmapping.net/hb/showroute.php?units=miles&u=duke87&r=on.allrd) comes from having ridden the subway line that runs in the median of it.
That reminds me, I have a bit of the A1020 by riding on the DLR in the median (dipping under it for stations).
But I don't count, for example, the Northern Line under the A24. Same ROW, but you don't see any of the roadway above.
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If it's moved onto a new bridge that was built next to the old one, or if an intersection is relocated by a few hundred feet, etc. I will comfortably ignore these things.
Bridge replacements are so common that otherwise it's nearly impossible to maintain clinches. I generally ignore them.
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I generally will count clinches by any of the following modes
- Driving
- Bicycling, either on the roadway or shared-use path (this is how I have Rock Creek Parkway)
- Walking, either on a sidewalk or shared-use path (several roads around DC and London in my case)
- Bus (transit, school, or coach)
- Streetcar/tram in the median or travel lanes and on the same level as the road (i.e. part of US 20 in Boston)
I will NOT count:
- Driving a freeway as clinching the frontage road if it is a different route (or vice-versa)
- Walking/driving under an elevated freeway or above a buried freeway
- Riding a rail line alongside, above, or below a numbered route, even if it's the same ROW, unless it meets the exception listed above. This means no using the Orange Line to clinch I-66.
I won't let bridge replacements or minor realignments affect a clinch. Anything more than a few hundred feet or a new expressway requires a re-clinch. As such, I considered my US 33 OH clinch broken once the Nelsonville bypass opened until I was able to drive the bypass.
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Not sure why I never considered walking, but that adds a little bit to my routes in Boston and Philadelphia. Most of my walking in DC was along Mall, so can't add anything there.
Totally agree on bridge changes, unless it's like changing from a large old truss bridge to a big new cable stayed design, such as in Brunswick GA several years ago. Same ROW lets me still consider roads long ago widened since my last travel. But yes, new bypasses don't count. Lost some of GA 72 east of Athens for that reason.
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I count any mode of travel on the road. Walking on the sidewalk along the route is acceptable. I don't do subway or train next to a road though. I think those should be travel routes in systems to be added, although only really fast trains (175 mph or faster usual travel speed i.e. Eurostar, TGV, ICE, Shinkansen) because they have only a few fixed stops instead of every little whistle stop. Frontage road only counts in 1 point per interchange instances where the actual ramps are so far apart, or rest areas and welcome centers since it is get off and get right back on. If the bridge replacement moves the right of way enough for the maintainer to make points for the old route, I tend to de-clinch that segment. I don't include routes from before I was 6 or so that I haven't traveled again, since I don't remember them or know how we got from point A to point B. The points can count in county travels though. On a trip as a teenager I know that we were at Hyde Park and the Vanderbilt mansion on the Hudson River and then were at Niagara Falls, but I have no clue how we got from point A to point B as I remember that my parents were tired of paying tolls. So there are some odd gaps for that trip, but I have as much as I can remember we covered for sure. Other trips were easier to figure out the route, or didn't look so strange with pieces missing. If my dog sled rides or snowmobile rides had gone over routes closed for winter, I would have counted those.
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Besides driving, or being a passenger, I've clinched roads on a bike twice and in a golf cart. I've walked segments to clinch a route, but never walked an entire route. That needs to happen somewhere in Kentucky on one of those quarter-mile-long routes. Thanks for the idea.
The discussion on declinching is interesting. Rather than thinking of roads as declinched, I more optimistically look at them as reclinchable. If I truly clinch a road (i.e. travel from endpoint to endpoint), from that point forward it's clinched forever, unless one of the endpoints moves to a new location not previously on the road. So a route that's extended (ON 407) or rerouted at the end (US 175) gets removed from the clinched list, but a route that keeps its endpoints and is rerouted somewhere in between (such as US 61 south of Cape Girardeau) remains clinched. I still keep track of them in my .list, with a special entry at the end. The reclinchable segment of US 501 in Virginia, for example, shows up as
YYVA US501 *OldUS501_S *OldUS501_N
I prefer to keep this list short, so whenever I'm near one of them I will travel the new section and remove it from the reclinchable list. To avoid slightly exaggerating my mileage, if a reroute results in the addition of a business route over the former alignment (TX 31), I won't add the business route to my .list until I've travelled the new alignment.
This policy doesn't affect reroutes on unclinched highways. For example, US 6 was rerouted in Sterling, CO earlier this year. Since I'm still missing mileage on US 6 elsewhere, I deleted the rerouted segment from my .list.
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This policy doesn't affect reroutes on unclinched highways. For example, US 6 was rerouted in Sterling, CO earlier this year. Since I'm still missing mileage on US 6 elsewhere, I deleted the rerouted segment from my .list.
I did that, too, even though I've otherwise clinched US 6. Fortunately, that segment is close to an Interstate, and it shouldn't be too hard to re-clinch next time I'm out West.
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I count driving, biking, walking, and any other transportation where I can see the road but still be near to the ground. It counts to me if I was awake and aware of the route travelled, and time of day or night does not matter. For example: I don't remember exactly where I was driven in Las Vegas, because I wasn't driving and wasn't fully aware, though I remember an I-215 shield when being shuttled around, and seeing a Nevada 604 shield when walking around. So I don't count any of that, since I'm not sure which routes I entered and exited from with much precision (and NV 604 was decommissioned).
I think I've clinched exactly two roads by walking them; I've driven one of them before, and the other isn't yet on TM.
Minor realignments don't de-clinch a segment, unless there's some significant visual distance (say, over 0.25 mile) between points. I'll count a route that's been renumbered if I drove on the same pavement and place.
Despite a lot of flying; no, I don't count routes nor counties I have flown over. I'll count the county I landed/departed from if I walked on the ground...but to date, there's only one county for which I've never left the terminal (Salt Lake City). That hasn't stopped me from snapping a few shots, though:
(https://live.staticflickr.com/65535/50637953292_5a0c6b17de_b.jpg) (https://flic.kr/p/2k9GKjd)
(https://live.staticflickr.com/65535/50637871156_7f8296c626_b.jpg) (https://flic.kr/p/2k9GjU5)
UT201 Facing West at 3200 West Intersection (https://flic.kr/p/2k9GjU5) by formulanone (https://www.flickr.com/photos/formulanone/), on Flickr
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I count driving, biking, walking, and any other transportation where I can see the road but still be near to the ground.
USBR 1 is immediately parallel to much of ME US1 ME24 ME196 (https://travelmapping.net/hb/showroute.php?r=me.us001&lat=43.915065075360104&lon=-69.93479004520889&zoom=15). At times, it's a tiny bit away but still visible. Sometimes it diverts a bit farther away, through the trees, finally peeling away west of ME196. If you'd only traveled USBR 1, would you count US1 as traveled?
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I count driving, biking, walking, and any other transportation where I can see the road but still be near to the ground.
USBR 1 is immediately parallel to much of ME US1 ME24 ME196 (https://travelmapping.net/hb/showroute.php?r=me.us001&lat=43.915065075360104&lon=-69.93479004520889&zoom=15). At times, it's a tiny bit away but still visible. Sometimes it diverts a bit farther away, through the trees, finally peeling away west of ME196. If you'd only traveled USBR 1, would you count US1 as traveled?
Pretty much. I'm not going to discount a clinch because you didn't see that road for a second or two. "Visual clinch" applies in cases where it's adjacent.
(I thought I was the only one who thinks of routes "peeling away/apart" from another.)
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I've walked segments to clinch a route, but never walked an entire route.
That needs to happen somewhere in Kentucky on one of those quarter-mile-long routes.
Short helps, obviously, but what I find useful is sidewalks and low traffic speeds - ie in an urban area.
Having spent some time making a subset of my list for just walking, all of them (we'll ignore the A57 in the Peak District where I walked half a mile between two paths as I'm only counting segments as-mapped) have sidewalks and most have a 30mph or lower speed limit.
When the .list file gets processed I'll be able to see the longest route I've fully done on-foot. I'm pretty sure it's the A112 (https://travelmapping.net/hb/showroute.php?units=miles&u=si404&r=eng.a0112) at 14.34 miles. That wasn't done in one go, but rather 3 or 4 trips that weren't exclusively about that one road. I don't believe I've ever been in a vehicle on it either.
And I may have done a segment in Indonesia in a rickshaw (I'm not certain of the route), just as another mode I've used.
I think those should be travel routes in systems to be added, although only really fast trains (175 mph or faster usual travel speed i.e. Eurostar, TGV, ICE, Shinkansen) because they have only a few fixed stops instead of every little whistle stop.
Yes - railways should be added. But why rule out all rail in North America, and an awful lot in other countries, with this HSR-only notion?
Having drafted the UK systems, most of the time the stops work as shaping points and even close together stations in dense city centres are a good 300 yrds apart as a minimum. The only 'little whistle stop' thing I've seen is the Manx Electric Railway - where it's basically a hail and ride tramway, with many stops unofficial ones that became official with the council putting a bus stop pole at the side of the rail. Anything that isn't tram always has stop spacing further apart than visible wpt spacing on nearby surface roads (both being a function of density - in city centres there's more points than in the countryside).
Plus, unlike with roads, it's easier to start with more local networks and then the intercity ones.