But just how hilly? I still haven’t found a good website to tell me how steep any individual street is, or even a good topological map of downtown + Capitol Hill. (I need to know this stuff because I’m starting to bike to work… ooooof!)
But here’s something I’ve found that is handy: Bikely.com! You can browse around to see other people’s bike routes, make your own, and most importantly, check the elevation changes on a route! Google maps has this info, but you need API fanciness to extract it; Bikely exposes this for us.
To see it in action, take a look at my Cap Hill –> P-I building route, or the reverse. Once it’s up, click “Show”, then “Elevation Profile”.
One more fun link: Seattle DOT has a map of the 20 steepest streets in the area. If anyone can suggest a good browsable topo map of the area, please chime in!
The path profiler is the best I’ve found.
http://maps.google.com/maps/mpl?moduleurl=http://www.heywhatsthat.com/profiler.xml
Click “show grade” to get the steepness. However, these things are never accurate over really small distances.
It will also give you a “topo” style map if you select the terrain view
very interesting stuff on the Seattle DOT site, and good resource links for lazy-ass…er, I mean hyper-efficient…bikers like me.