How to Use Travel Mapping

[Jim]

Anyone can submit their travels to be included in the site. Please see the information for how to create and submit your data.

Once your data is in the system, you will be listed on the main traveler stats page, and you can see a summary of your travels on your user page. Click around on the various links and table entries to find more ways to see your travels, both as tabular statistics and plotted on maps.

====================================================================================

The Travel Mapping (TM) project welcomes users, both those who previously used CHM (the now defunct Clinched Highway Mapping project) and new users, to submit their travels for inclusion in the system.

Becoming a TM user is simple: create and submit a ".list" file showing the segments you've traveled on the highways we've included in the project. 

This process is substantially the same as it was in CHM.  CHM's process is described at http://cmap.m-plex.com/docs/getstarted.php.  Please refer to that until we get our own instruction manual up, but note the following changes:

• Our highway browser, which will show the latest versions of all routes in the project, is at http://travelmapping.net/hb/.  Note that the ".list Name" column on the big list of routes gives the region and route name you'll need as the first two items on each .list file line.
• If you are coming to the project from CHM, you are welcome to submit your old .list file then see what errors show up (see below for where to look) or make a preemptive pass through our updates page for changes that will affect you: http://travelmapping.net/devel/updates.php
• You can submit files by email to travmap@teresco.org or by forking our GitHub repository at https://github.com/TravelMapping/UserData, adding your file, and submitting a pull request (detailed instructions on this method to be produced - would be happy to receive some to post from one of the several users who are maintaining their files this way).
• A great place to start looking around is the project's home page at http://travelmapping.net/ then follow the "Traveler Stats" link which will take you to http://travelmapping.net/stat.php and browse around from there.

Once the first version of your .list file has been imported and the site has been updated (typically done every evening between 9 and 11 PM Eastern, sometimes more often), you can see your information in a few ways:

• Visit http://travelmapping.net/user/ and enter your username (the base name of the .list you sent) to see a summary of your travels.  Click on various places on this page to find others ways of viewing your stats (and those of other travelers) by region, by system, and more.
• A log file giving any errors in the processing of your data and a summary of the stats generated will become available at http://travelmapping.net/logs/users/terescoj.log, but of course you would substitute your own username at the end (the base name of the .list you sent).
• Lots of stats are available in csv files linked from http://travelmapping.net/stats/
• A map visualization using map overlays at a URL like http://travelmapping.net/user/mapview.php?rg=WI&u=terescoj.  Again, you will substitute your own username, and you can give any comma-separated list of TravelMapping regions after the rg=, or you can replace it with a comma-separated list after a sys= specifying system codes that you would like mapped.  For example, the following shows my travels on all national systems in the US: http://travelmapping.net/user/mapview.php?sys=usai,usaib,usaif,usaus,usausb,usasf,usansf&u=terescoj (be prepared to wait for your browser to load this - it's a lot of data to transfer and map)
• You can add a u= parameter to any highway browser URL to see your travels on that route as defined by your most recently-imported .list file.  For example: http://travelmapping.net/hb/?r=ny.us020&u=terescoj shows my travels to date on US 20 in New York.

Though we've made and continue to make a lot of updates and fixes to the highway data compared to the last version from CHM, former CHM users should find that their CHM .list files are still a great starting point for mapping your travels with the new system.

TM has most of the functionality CHM had, and a lot more.  We have plenty of ideas for how to make it even better and are always looking for more.  This forum and the TM GitHub repositories are the places to learn about new features, report bugs, or make suggestions for new features.

I intend to keep this post current as URLs change, functionality is added, etc.

[marnen]

The CHM server is down, but the docs are still accessible through the Wayback Machine at http://web.archive.org/web/20190224025448/http://cmap.m-plex.com/docs/getstarted.php.

[michih]

Our own user manual is available now: http://travelmapping.net/participate.php

[jbum86]

Is there a way to view this Travel Mapping forum on the Tapatalk app as  you can in the AAroads forum?

[TravelGuy]

Recently found this forum. I do a lot of travelling. Reading the guide on how to report. Very confusing in the beginning.

[Jim]

Recently found this forum. I do a lot of travelling. Reading the guide on how to report. Very confusing in the beginning.

Glad you found us.  What was confusing?  I'd like to improve it.

[rickmastfan67]

Recently found this forum. I do a lot of travelling. Reading the guide on how to report. Very confusing in the beginning.

Glad you found us.  What was confusing?  I'd like to improve it.

I think it's a spam bot due to the signature.

[michih]

I think it's a spam bot due to the signature.

If so, a clever one

[TravelGuy]

Recently found this forum. I do a lot of travelling. Reading the guide on how to report. Very confusing in the beginning.

Glad you found us.  What was confusing?  I'd like to improve it.

I think it's a spam bot due to the signature.

No, nothing as exciting as a bot. 

[TravelGuy]

Recently found this forum. I do a lot of travelling. Reading the guide on how to report. Very confusing in the beginning.

Glad you found us.  What was confusing?  I'd like to improve it.

Apologies for the delay in replying Jim, been a busy few months here. I think the main confusing thing for me was I've only driven a few times in the US, I live in the UK. So I was looking at a recent trip I had done, from Boise ID to Nampa, ID. (I believe that would be list ID55?) I also then travelled from Nampa to Mountain Home on the I84 I think it is. How would I map these? I tried using the Highway Browser and the .list tool, but nothing showed up when I clicked on the route.

[Markkos1992]

Using the list tool, you have to click on the line on that stated route's page.

[TravelGuy]

Using the list tool, you have to click on the line on that stated route's page.

Aaaah, thank you! I was clicking on the route markers lol