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Lines · Tap two endpoints

Farm track and driveway route planner by gradient

This farm track gradient planner finds a route between two points that favours gentle grades and stays under the maximum grade you set, then shows its elevation profile. It zig-zags up a face the way a track designer would, using the LINZ 1 m LiDAR model.

Use it to test whether a grade limit can be met at all, and to sketch where a track or driveway could go before walking it with a contractor.

Route zig-zagging up the hill with its profile in the panel
Route Explorer on Mt Iron, Wānaka. The walkthrough below shows how this was made.

Free to run · pay to download

See the full result on the map free, with no account. Download the route as GeoJSON and its profile as CSV with a pass: NZ$49 for 7 days or NZ$299 for 12 months, one-off, GST included, not a subscription. Every download on the site is included while the pass lasts.

Open Route Explorer on the map →Pass prices and what’s included

Who uses this

  • Farmers and foresters. Sketch a track line that machinery can use.
  • Lifestyle-block owners. Test whether a driveway to the house site can make the grade.

When to use it

  • Sketching where a farm track, a driveway or a walking track could go on a hillside.
  • Checking whether a grade limit can be met at all between two points.

Which tool for your job

Route Explorer is one step in a bigger question. These are the jobs it helps with, and the tools that go with it.

If you’re working on earthworks, driveways and tracks

How much digging, and can a driveway or farm track make the grade?

  1. 1.Cut & Fill — Cut and fill volumes to level a pad, at a height you set or the one that balances.
  2. 2.Elevation Profile — Gradient along a proposed driveway, section by section.
  3. 3.Route Explorer (this tool) — Finds a line between two points that stays under a maximum grade.
  4. 4.Contour Lines — Site contours at 0.5 m or finer to hand to a designer.

How to use it

  1. Open Route Explorer and tap the start and the end.
  2. Set the maximum route grade in percent.
  3. Finish endpoints and run. The route is drawn, and the profile appears in the panel.
  4. Export the route as GeoJSON and the profile as CSV.

Step by step: Mt Iron, Wānaka

We ask for a track from the foot of Mt Iron to the top that never goes steeper than 20 %.

Two endpoints placed on the map with a maximum route grade of 20 %
1.Open Route Explorer, tap the start and the end, then Finish endpoints. Set the maximum grade.
Route zig-zagging up the hill with its profile in the panel
2.Run analysis. Instead of the straight 1 km line the route winds 2,409 m to climb 211 m, and its steepest section is 18.7 %.

What it showed

  • Lower the grade limit and the route gets longer. If no route fits, the profile shows where the limit is broken.

Screenshots from NZ Elevation Tools. Aerial imagery from LINZ Basemaps. Sourced from the LINZ Data Service and licensed by Environment Southland, Otago Regional Council and Queenstown-Lakes District Council for re-use under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International licence.

Try it on Mt Iron, Wānaka →

How it works

Terrain is loaded for the two endpoints plus a 500 m margin. Every cell is a node connected to its eight neighbours, with a cost that grows with distance and with grade, and a very high cost above your limit. The lowest-cost path from start to end is found, which is why the route zig-zags up a face rather than going straight.

Reading the results

The profile shows the grade the route actually achieves. If parts still exceed your limit, no route within the margin could avoid them.

Length and total climb are along the route, not the straight line.

Limits and warnings

  • A terrain exploration aid, not a road design. No cut and fill, drainage, culverts, sight distances or legal access are considered.
  • The search is limited to 500 m either side of the endpoints, so a route that needs a wide detour will not be found.
  • Where 1 m LiDAR has not been flown the tool falls back to the national 8 m elevation model, and the result says what share came from the fallback. The 8 m model was interpolated from 20 m map contours and is not fit for site-scale decisions.

Data and attribution

Results come from the LINZ national 1 m LiDAR bare-earth elevation model, read in your browser, with the national 8 m model filling any gaps. Tools that use the surface model (Sunlight, Viewshed, Object Heights) read the matching LiDAR surface tiles.

Elevation and cadastral data is sourced from the LINZ Data Service and licensed for re-use under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International licence. Copyright in each LiDAR survey belongs to the body that commissioned it — a regional or district council, Waka Kotahi, NIWA and around thirty others — rather than to LINZ, which hosts and processes the national dataset. Every file exported from this site names the licensors whose surveys cover the area, and anything you publish from those files carries the same attribution requirement. See https://www.linz.govt.nz/products-services/data/licensing-and-using-data/attributing-elevation-or-aerial-imagery-data

Questions

Is this a road design?

No. It is a terrain exploration aid. Cut and fill, drainage, culverts, sight distances and legal access are not considered.

Ready to try it?

Open Route Explorer on the map →

Free to use, no account. Runs in your browser on LINZ open data. Downloading the results needs a pass: see prices.