If you lack Spandex and confidence but want to pedal Pittsburgh's neighborhoods, you have a friend in Bob Firth. A mapmaker who for years has advocated for safe travel options, he will soon launch a map that reveals bike tricks for the low-risk crowd.

Mr. Firth, president of Informing Design, is the man behind the Pittsburgh Figured Out atlas in the early 1990s and the subsequent wayfinder signs throughout the city, the ones with a three-rivers logo at the top and a star under the site name.

He began building a brand he calls bobsmaps with six downloads. Most of them show car parking options at big events. One shows the bicycle routes through Schenley Park.

With his latest map, his goal was to plot a safe ride without barriers in a loop around some of the city's most vibrant and busy neighborhoods -- Oakland, Shadyside, Point Breeze, Regent Square and Squirrel Hill.

He found a loop even a nervous Nellie could handle -- except for one big gap.

"To get from Bakery Square into Shadyside directly," it seemed inevitable a biker would have to risk life and limb on Penn Avenue, he said. Pittsburgh Schenley High School and the Ellis School seemed to present "a continuous set of walls and fences."

He asked his colleague, Jeff Guy, a competitive cyclist, to find a peaceful conduit between Bakery Square and Shadyside. Mr. Guy returned with the news: There is access across Penn from Bakery Square onto a little road that zig-zags around the Ellis School Armory in Mellon Park and ends at a grassy brick right-of-way that connects to Howe Street.

"There is a way," Mr. Firth said jubilantly. "I feel like we've discovered the Great Northwest Passage of the East End."

From Howe, roughly, the loop proceeds to Shady to Alder to Ellsworth to Neville and, with a few jogs here and there, through Schenley Park into Squirrel Hill into Frick Park to the bike lane on Forbes. To get back to Bakery Square, jog onto Reynolds Street and cross Fifth Avenue back into Mellon Park.

The details are still being tweaked; the map is due out next week. Mr. Firth's site is www.bobsmaps.com.

"I did the entire circuit in under two hours, including time for lunch" said Mr. Guy, a category 2 rider. That's two steps down from pro. "It's about 40 kilometers."

The map's insets will detail the various tricky conduits, including the "northwest passage," and show links from Oakland to the Strip to Downtown to the North Side as well as from Oakland to the South Side.

Mr. Firth said he aims to make route lines pop out of the obscurity of a grid, making them easier to see if a rider needs to check them en route. He will be adding fresh maps every few weeks, he said.

"There's nothing like getting out there on a bike to discover things, but with one disconnection you have discomfort."

Bobsmaps is not making money yet, although he has his new booklet "Pittsburgh Cheat Sheet" on sale at his website. In building a brand, he said, Google started the same way. His motto: "Stuff figured out, one 8.5-by-11-inch map at a time."

The idea sprang from the success of a map he made for the Pittsburgh Marathon "to show people how to get in and around the marathon course. I thought we could do maps that I don't think anyone else is doing."

He has bicycle maps from all over the world and says most of the routes look like "piles of spaghetti." Most maps in general are too complex and do not convey "the secrets of the grid."

"I want to convey configurational knowledge at a glance, make spaghetti maps perfectly clear and ordered."

In May, he wrote a "Next Page" for the Post-Gazette headlined: "A Life in Pittsburgh ... With a Lot Less Car in It: a 12-Step Program"

He advocates for physically protected bike lanes and car-free Sundays, which many cities have instituted to close off portions of roadways for bicycles or to dedicate one lane for bikes only.

He concedes Pittsburgh is a world ahead of where it was 20, even 10 years ago. The river trails were the beginning of what is now an improving culture of bicycles mingling with vehicular traffic. Improving, he said, but far from safe.

"I want people to know that if they find something difficult" on a route they travel to let him know by visiting the bobsmaps website. "Minute local knowledge is what a good map needs."

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