I’ve been meaning to share this for a while, this is my offline map for android to help me find publicly owned, unsealed road and vehicle track access while out on the bike.
Inspired by the map at map-of-all-unsealed-roads-in-new-zealand I wanted a map that I could use offline on my phone.
Using NZ topo maps as the base map, this map provides overlays to highlight public roads and vehicle tracks, the overlays also include highlighting for public road and land parcels, using the same datasources and colour scheme as the WAMS (Walking access commission) maps.
Note that these are only a useful guide, even where tracks are on public land, they’re not guaranteed to be publicly accessible as these are often gated off by local councils and landowners.
The road & track centrelines and public parcel data are taken from LINZ and WAMS
The base map is a render of the NZ topo maps, originally rendered by Ian R here, https://sites.google.com/site/irnzmaps/ though I have changed it to be just NZ topo 50 for zoom level 14 and zoom levels 1-13 use NZ topo 250
The maps and overlays are rendered using a program called qgis, and take a couple of weeks to render on my computer and include a bit of manual adjustment on the layers for each zoom level, in addition the algorithm that determines the public / probably public / private status of all the road parcels takes a couple of days to run. (There are a lot of roads and land parcels to check), So while I might do another run every year or so with updated map data, I’m not likely to incorporate any corrections / updates on the status of particular tracks.
The map app I use is Locus maps, which is only available for android, as far as I’m aware there are no mapping apps for iphones that will let you use your own tiles files.
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To get this on your android phone:
Install Locus Maps from the Play Store, you need the paid version to do map overlays.
I’d recommend getting version 3, it has all the necessary features, and you just pay a one off fee, where as version 4 needs a subscription.
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=menion.android.locus.pro
Once downloaded, open the app and this will create a Locus folder on your phone’s filesystem.
Download the linked mbtiles files to your phone, then put them in Locus/maps
NZ Topo:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1f7WWupwXyUMoleFiSnsHDqmC3X4j_qk9
NZ Unsealed roads and tracks + WAMS:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1z_sPRdcsPcKdwMymjZNsD-wkJWJPvQ34
Then in locus do the following:
Menu Button (Top left) -> Maps -> Offline -> menu button (top right) -> refresh list -> Select ‘NZ Topo 2022’
Menu Button -> More Functions -> Map Overlays -> Enable Overlay -> Change Map -> Select Offline Map -> NZ Unsealed Roads and Tracks 2022 -> Set Visibility to 50%
For better zoom level adjustment:
Menu Button -> Settings -> Maps -> Advanced Features -> Disable “Optimize raster map resolution”
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The overlay colour coding for public roads / tracks is as follows:
Dark Blue – Unsealed Road on public land
Dark Purple – Vehicle Track on public land
Black – Probably public unsealed road or vehicle track, This is where the road centre line is on a road / track that is mostly on public land / road parcel, but this particular part of the road isn’t actually on public land. This happens a lot that the public formed road isn’t actually on public land.
These black highlighted sections are automatically generated by an algorithm I’ve written, and it’s useful in identifying through roads at a glance, but isn’t perfect, it does get a bit confused in some places, so should just be treated as a guide.
In these cases it’s best to zoom all the way in and look for the light pink line which shows the actual area of land owned for public roads, or the green areas that show conservation or reserve land and use your best judgement to see if the formed road looks like it’s supposed to be following a public land corridor.
The WAMS overlay colour coding for public parcels is as follows:
Light Pink / Purple – Road Parcel / PAE Easement
Light Red / Pink – Walkway Easement
Light Green – Reserve Land
Dark Green – Conservation Land
Purple – Esplanade Strip
Teal – Esplanade Reserve
Blue – Hydro Parcel
Wow! great work Cass, thankyou for your time put into this. I can see this being a very useful tool to have out and about. One good scenario I can think up right now is you are on a ULR and the track diverges into two and you are not sure which one to is the public access. Now, I normally research before I go on a ULR but there are instances where checking is needed at site and this will take some homework out of it.
Thanks Cass, that is great work. As a locus maps user I can swap between views of the same location rather than trying to work across multiple maps on the computer. Great to get an indication of land ownership as well.
Looks great, thanks Cass!
I’ll try to install this map as an overlay on OSMand.
would be great if that works.
Thank you so much. Used the maps to find and navigate Makairo Track two days ago. Excellent.
Did anyone travel Takapari recently? Still so much deep mud on the way up?
Not myself, but word is it’s pretty cut up at the moment.
That’s pretty close to perfect. I was not sure whether it is possible or not to get the NZ topo map to Locus Map, and I had both on my phone, and I used them accordingly (riding on sealed road or not). Now this feature makes life simpler. Thanks Cass. I can’t wait to try it on the bike.
Off topic, Is there anyone noticed Locus Map uses lot more power than NZ Topo (track recording). I tried various settings but neither made any difference.