Strava’s New “Points of Interest” Helps Cyclists Find the Nearest Bike Shop or Cafe

Maps on both the Strava mobile app and website will now include a Points of Interest map layer, which is aimed at helping cyclists find the best places to start their rides from thanks to a new Start Points feature, as well as the nearest bike shop, cafe, water fountain, restroom, photo spot and other popular sites courtesy of the Start Points option, relying on de-identified and aggregate public community data to see which locations get clusters of uploads from users, with the most used placed on the map. 

Using Points of Interest for Route Planning

While all users will be able to see the Points of Interest map layer, subscribers can now plan their routes by using the Maps tab or the Routebuilder on the Strava website. To create a route from one of the suggested Start Points, user can navigate to Maps > Routes from the Strava mobile app, then simply long-press on the point and their route recommendations will adjust.

How Points of Interest Are Generated

Points of Interest are drawn from Strava’s OpenStreetMap data, with the most popular locations highlighted on the map.

While users won’t be able to add points of interest to the base map directly, Strava has hinted this might become a possibility in the future.

FAQs

If one of the points is inaccurate (bathroom is closed or water fountain isn’t on, for example) how do I report it for the rest of the community?

Strava aks that you report any issues to our maps data provider, OpenStreetMap, to reflect accurately on Strava Maps. This article has details on how.

Where can I submit a Point of Interest for inclusion on the map?

You can submit the location to our maps data provider, OpenStreetMap using the instructions found here.

If I don’t want my activities contributing to Points of Interest, what should I do? 

• To exclude all your activities from the Points of Interest dataset, disable the toggle to ‘Include my activities on Metro and Heatmap’. More information on how to change this setting can be found here.
• To exclude individual activities from the Points of Interest dataset, change the activity’s privacy controls to ‘Only You’. More information on how to change this setting can be found here.

Do hidden portions of an activity affect Points of Interest? 

Strava doesn’t take any information from maps that its community hides when they generate “popular” points of interest. If you’ve hidden part or all of an activity’s map, your data would not be considered in determining a location’s “popularity”. 

If I own a business and don’t want it to show on Strava Maps, what should I do? 

If you’re a business owner and don’t want to appear on Strava Maps, you can remove the business info in OSM.