Calculation of hiking time
Dear developer team,
I've just discovered your app thanks to a hiking friend, it looks excellent, congratulations and thanks!
Since I'm on iOS, I look forward to the availability of offline maps, and will subscribe to Premium as soon as they are.
I've tried the web route planner, and like it very much.
Since I'm surprised by the very high estimated hiking time in the stats, I searched your manual and read here that "The time is calculated from a combination of various parameters. These include distance, elevation profile, estimated speed, estimated elevation gain/loss per hour or a certain amount of break time specific for particular activities."
Can you please provide more details? Is it possible to adjust the hiking speed parameters (horizontal, up and down) on the web planner to make it more realistic according to each hiker own capacity?
For example, I find a hiking time of 10h 20min for a 9km, +1200m, -1200m hike which means an average speed lower than 1km/h: extremely slow!
Thanks in advance
The same question
Hello Herve,
Making adjustments (setting walking speed on flat ground) is already possible in the Android App. For web, this feature waits for implementation (with many more customization options). I can provide full details how speed is calculated (Basically using Tobler's formula), but first: It looks like there is something wrong with calculation of 1 km/h for walking. Could you please share that route from web planner here? Radim, backend dev.
Hello Herve,
Making adjustments (setting walking speed on flat ground) is already possible in the Android App. For web, this feature waits for implementation (with many more customization options). I can provide full details how speed is calculated (Basically using Tobler's formula), but first: It looks like there is something wrong with calculation of 1 km/h for walking. Could you please share that route from web planner here? Radim, backend dev.
There's a normed formula for calculating hiking times of the average fit hiker. This formula is used to calculate hiking times printed on guideposts of hiking trails in the Alps. It's based on different speeds for vertical-uphill (300 m/h) , vertical-downhill (500 m/h) and horizontal (4 km/h) part of a route. Vertical and horizontal times are calculated seperately and finally the lower value divided by 2 of both is added to the larger value.
Example: 1200 m up, 1200 m down, 12 km horizontal length.
=> 4h up + 2h24min down = 6h24min vertical | 3h horizontal
=> 6h2hmin + 3h/2 = 7h54min total time
there are articles, e.g. https://www.alpenverein.at/portal/news/aktuelle_news_kurz/2018/2018_06_14_wie-berechnet-man-die-gehzeit-auf-wanderwegen.php
https://www.bergwelten.com/a/bergsteigen-berechnung-der-gehzeit
Idea: Please make Locus use this formula to calculate hiking times of planned routes, as well as of imported track and display it in the statistics-tab of a track.
And make the 3 time-parameters changeable to adjust to individual fitness level.
There's a normed formula for calculating hiking times of the average fit hiker. This formula is used to calculate hiking times printed on guideposts of hiking trails in the Alps. It's based on different speeds for vertical-uphill (300 m/h) , vertical-downhill (500 m/h) and horizontal (4 km/h) part of a route. Vertical and horizontal times are calculated seperately and finally the lower value divided by 2 of both is added to the larger value.
Example: 1200 m up, 1200 m down, 12 km horizontal length.
=> 4h up + 2h24min down = 6h24min vertical | 3h horizontal
=> 6h2hmin + 3h/2 = 7h54min total time
there are articles, e.g. https://www.alpenverein.at/portal/news/aktuelle_news_kurz/2018/2018_06_14_wie-berechnet-man-die-gehzeit-auf-wanderwegen.php
https://www.bergwelten.com/a/bergsteigen-berechnung-der-gehzeit
Idea: Please make Locus use this formula to calculate hiking times of planned routes, as well as of imported track and display it in the statistics-tab of a track.
And make the 3 time-parameters changeable to adjust to individual fitness level.
Hi Radim,
Thanks for your answer.
Yes I did notice in the Android manual the ability to adjust the walking speed, so I look forward to a similar possibility in the web planner and the iOS version. Nevertheless you should allow to set independently the three parameters (horizontal, up and down speeds), not as "predefined sets" (Take a walk/hike/Trail runner) like in the Android app.
Indeed, on some terrains the horizontal speed may be very slow even for a fast hiker who performs very well up and down. Although I use to hike around 500 to 600m/h up, 700 to 1000 m/h down, I already hiked on very complicated ground where my horizontal speed was less than 1km/h. So for me the best option would be to have three independent cursors to adjust these speed parameters. And then to use them to compute the hiking time using the formula suggested by Sonny.
Re. my particular speed calculation, see the attached GPX file for the track. The Statistics calculated by Locus web planner are: 8.8km / 10:45 / -1216 / +1184
Hi Radim,
Thanks for your answer.
Yes I did notice in the Android manual the ability to adjust the walking speed, so I look forward to a similar possibility in the web planner and the iOS version. Nevertheless you should allow to set independently the three parameters (horizontal, up and down speeds), not as "predefined sets" (Take a walk/hike/Trail runner) like in the Android app.
Indeed, on some terrains the horizontal speed may be very slow even for a fast hiker who performs very well up and down. Although I use to hike around 500 to 600m/h up, 700 to 1000 m/h down, I already hiked on very complicated ground where my horizontal speed was less than 1km/h. So for me the best option would be to have three independent cursors to adjust these speed parameters. And then to use them to compute the hiking time using the formula suggested by Sonny.
Re. my particular speed calculation, see the attached GPX file for the track. The Statistics calculated by Locus web planner are: 8.8km / 10:45 / -1216 / +1184
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