Topographical maps present the height and leave the gradient to be interpreted by the reader, if it's possible at all. What this shows is the gradient and is much more useful to me as a cyclist and/or pedestrian, I don't care if I'm ascending 50m but I do care if that's over a 100 meter or 200 meter distance. Depending on how fine grained a topographical map is this information could be hard to impossible to interpret.