About this map — Happy Trails

The lines

Every line on the map is a way of getting somewhere without a car, and the kind of line tells you what sort of way it is.

TrailA paved, car-free path. The green lines are the backbone of the map and the reason it exists.
Unpaved trailGravel or dirt. Rideable on most bikes, less pleasant after rain, and not always cleared in winter.
Under constructionBeing built now. It should join the green network when it opens.
Bike laneOn-road, and shown only where it does the job of a trail — joining two pieces of the off-road network. This is not a map of the city's bike lanes.
ConnectionA short link between two trails that is neither trail nor lane: a park path, a quiet street, a way through.
Road connectionThe same idea, on a road you share with traffic. Usable, but you are in the road.
Dangerous connectionA link that exists and that most people should not take. Shown because pretending it is not there does not help anybody.
Wishful thinkingA trail that does not exist. Purple, everywhere on this site, means a proposal — see below.
BridgeThe trail is carried over something — a river, a road, a railway.
StairsYou will be carrying your bike.
BarrierA gate, a bollard or a chicane. Worth knowing about on a cargo bike or a trike.

Behind them, in grey and blue, is the city: roads, highways, railways, rivers and golf courses. None of it is there to be ridden. It is there because the shape of the trail network is explained almost entirely by what it has had to get around, and a trail map with nothing else on it hides the whole argument.

The dots: how you get across the road

The small circles along a trail are the places it meets a road. What colour the circle is tells you what is waiting for you there, and it is the single most useful thing on the map if you are riding with children or on anything wider than a bicycle.

Red — nothing at allThe trail meets the road and stops. No markings, no signal, no island. You wait for a gap and you take your chances, and on a busy road that can mean a long wait.
Green — you are helped acrossSomething is there to get you over: paint, a signal, a tunnel or a bridge. The four kinds are below.
White — a junctionNot a road crossing at all. Two trails meet here and you can go either way.

A red dot — nothing at all The path arrives at the kerb and the road simply carries on: no markings, no island, no sign telling drivers that anybody comes out here. You wait for a gap in both directions and go when you think you can, which is a different proposition on a quiet residential street than on a four-lane arterial. This is the one colour on the map worth planning around — a trail with two or three red dots on it is not a trail you hand to a child, however good the rest of it is.

A green dot is any of the five below. They are not equally good, and the order here is roughly the order you would want them in: paint is an argument, a signal is an instruction, and a bridge or a tunnel means the question never comes up. What they have in common is that somebody thought about the person on the trail.

Green — a painted crossing Markings across the road and a sign on the approach, so drivers are told that people cross here. Nothing makes them stop, and at speed the paint is doing all of the work on its own — which is why this is the weakest of the greens. It is still a long way better than a red dot: you have somewhere definite to stand, and drivers have been warned.
Green — a crossover with lights The paint, plus overhead beacons you press to set flashing before you go. Traffic is required to stop, and mostly does, because the lights make it obvious who has right of way rather than leaving it to be negotiated. A good, cheap answer on a two- or three-lane road; less convincing where four lanes mean the driver in the far lane cannot see why the near one has stopped.
Green — a full signal Traffic lights with a phase of their own, usually a pedestrian signal, and often a marked track across the junction for bikes. It is the best thing on this list that keeps you at road level: the crossing is part of how the junction works rather than an interruption to it. The cost is the wait, which on a big intersection can be most of a minute.
Green — under it The trail drops under the road and never meets the traffic at all, so there is no waiting, no judging a gap and nothing to teach a child about. Underpasses are usually an accident of the landscape — a valley the road had to bridge anyway — which is why the ravine trails have so many of them. The one thing to know is that they flood: after heavy rain a valley underpass can be the reason a trail is shut.
Green — over it A bridge does the same job the other way up, and it is the most expensive thing on this page by a wide margin — which is exactly why a new one is worth noticing. It also costs the rider something, since a bridge has to be climbed and a tunnel does not; the ramps are long, and on a loaded bike you feel them. Still the answer where there is no valley to drop into.

Which crossing a dot stands for is not written on the map — the map says only red, green or white. These six are what the green ones turn out to be when you get there.

Wishful thinking

Half of what this map is for is the trails that are not there. Switch Wishful thinking on — it is in the Layers panel, behind the stacked-squares button on the left of any map — and the proposals appear in purple.

Purple means the same thing everywhere on this site, without exception: this does not exist. A purple line is a trail nobody has built. A purple waypoint marks a specific problem, with a picture of what is there now and, where it is worth drawing, a picture of what it could be — drag the slider across the photograph to see one become the other. A purple button where two trails meet leads to a proposed trail rather than a real one, and it only appears while Wishful thinking is switched on, because an offer to take you to a trail the map is currently not admitting exists is no offer at all.

Every proposal is also listed on the Wishful thinking page, where you can sort them by what they would cost and how much good they would do. Some are a coat of paint and a sign. Some are a bridge. They are one person's opinion, offered as a starting point for an argument rather than the end of one.

Walking a trail

Every trail has its own page, and a trail page is not a map you look at — it is a trail you walk. Scroll, and the map moves under you from one end to the other. The distance, the height and how far along you are count up as you go, and a waypoint's card arrives by itself when you reach it. It is the whole point of the site, and it costs nothing to try: open any trail and scroll.

A waypointSomewhere worth stopping, with pictures and a few words. Click its circle on the map to open it at any time, or just keep scrolling and let it come to you.
A wishful waypointThe same thing about a problem: what is wrong here, what it would take to fix, and often a before and after you can drag between.

Autoplay

If you would rather not scroll, press play in the row of buttons at the bottom of a trail page and the map walks itself. It travels at a steady pace, slows as it comes into a waypoint, holds there long enough to read the card, and moves on. The same row is on the main map, where it flies between the featured waypoints across the whole city rather than along one trail.

PlayStart the tour from wherever you are standing — not from the top, unless that is where you are.
HoldThe same button while it is playing. The card stays where it is for as long as you want it; press again to carry on.
BackTo the waypoint before this one. It works whether or not a tour is running, and a tour that is held stays held — "show me the last one" is not "start the clock again".
OnThe next waypoint, the same way. The count between the two arrows says where you are and how many there are.
StopLeave the tour altogether, which Escape also does. Expanding a card during a tour is remembered while it runs — the ones after it open expanded too — and forgotten the moment you stop.

Taking hold of the page yourself — scrolling, dragging the elevation graph, opening a card — stops the tour immediately, because a page that keeps driving while you are trying to steer is infuriating. Nothing is lost: press play again and it carries on from where you now are.

The rest of the furniture

The compassTop left of every map, and on a trail page it is also a switch: click it and a cyclist rides the trail in place of the red dot, at whatever speed you are scrolling.
LegendUnder the compass. Every kind of line and dot on the map, with what it means — the same list as the top of this page, available without leaving the map.
LayersUnder that, and the one worth opening. Wishful thinking lives here, along with bike lanes, unpaved trails, the hydro corridors, the railways and the golf courses that so many routes have to go round.
ZoomBottom right. On a trail page the map steps BACK from the walk's own view, to show you where a bend is heading, and never closer — the walk has already chosen the closest useful view.
FITBack to the view the page had chosen for you: the whole city on the main map, and the walk's own framing on a trail. On a touch screen you can pinch instead.
A junction buttonA blue pill where one trail meets another. Follow it and you are on that trail's page at the point where the two touch, which is how you get across the network without going back to the main map.
A purple junction buttonThe same thing leading to a proposal rather than to a trail. It only appears while Wishful thinking is on — a button offering to take you to a trail the map is currently not admitting exists would be an odd offer.
Expand a cardTop right of any waypoint card. It fills the window with the photograph, which is the only way to see what is actually in some of them. Press it again, or Escape, to put it back.

What the map is not

It is not to scale, it is not routing software, and it is not authoritative. Distances are measured along the drawn line and are close enough to be useful and wrong enough not to plan by. Surfaces change, trails close, and construction moves. If something here is out of date or simply wrong, tell me — that is the fastest way this gets better.