Strava SNAP: Fix GPS data to track roads

I use my mobile phone’s GPS to track my bike rides which I then upload to Strava. Unlike purpose built GPS devices, phone GPS can be wildly inaccurate, especially in the steep valleys I often ride through in the Santa Cruz Mountains. The results uploaded to Strava can look like this.


track1

Note how the red line can go tens of feet off of the actual road. It throws the elevation data out of whack, and I can miss segments and KOMs. But an online tool provides a way to fix this track for you!

The Strava SNAP tool at Raceshape.com can massage your track so it follows the roads. Here’s what my corrected track looks like.


track-2

To use the tool, you paste in the URL of your original Strava track. SNAP then snaps the tracks to the nearest roads. For longer rides, you’ll need to snap the line to the correct roads but it’s easy enough to figure out.

Use it at strava-tools.raceshape.com/snap/.

2 Comments

  1. Neat feature! Does it reupload to strava for you or is that a manual process? I wonder what happens if you venture off road to a place the Google doesn’t recognize. It’s also very possible that Google data isn’t totally accurate either – I posted problem reports to Google for particular sections that are clearly not correct (just look at hybrid mode and you can see when a satellite images proves their road data was off in a certain point).

    The other inaccuracy I still haven’t seen a good fix for is bridges. If you ride over a 200ft tall bridge, these data sites usually can only assume that you actually went down into the gorge and climbed back up out of it!

  2. You’re given the option of an automatic upload if you don’t mind giving your Strava login to Raceshape.

    You can fudge with the modified tracks quite a bit, but I don’t remember if you can “snap” tracks to go off road.

    I hear you on the bridge elevations 🙂

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