Cycle Travel Question

Cycle-touring, Expeditions, Adventures, Major cycle routes NOT LeJoG (see other special board)
mark a.
Posts: 1375
Joined: 8 Jan 2007, 2:47pm
Location: Surrey

Re: New Route Planner

Post by mark a. »

Psamathe wrote:
mark a. wrote:... OSM ... It's easy to do (their new editor is excellent) ...

Which editor and where can you get it (Windows and/or Mac and/or Linux ...)

Ian


Just the standard in-browser iD editor.
Richard Fairhurst
Posts: 2030
Joined: 2 Mar 2008, 4:57pm
Location: Charlbury, Oxfordshire

Re: New Route Planner

Post by Richard Fairhurst »

mark a. wrote:I'm bringing up an older thread in case Richard is listening:

cycle.travel often struggles to generate a circular route. I thought I was just unlucky with a particular start/end point but for me it seems to be more often than not I get a "Sorry - couldn't find a circular route. Try a different destination or a longer route." message.

Let's say Woking to Dorking (anywhere in those towns) - no luck. Or to Ashtead (so I can try out Bike Beans café).

Is it me, a bug or just the massive difficulties to get an algorithm to find something good?


I think I've fixed this now. Try here and click 'Circular route' as usual - it should come up with one!
cycle.travel - maps, journey-planner, route guides and city guides
mark a.
Posts: 1375
Joined: 8 Jan 2007, 2:47pm
Location: Surrey

Re: New Route Planner

Post by mark a. »

Brill! Thanks Richard. You're a star.
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Heltor Chasca
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Joined: 30 Aug 2014, 8:18pm
Location: Near Bath & The Mendips in Somerset

Re: New Route Planner

Post by Heltor Chasca »

A fantastic site that I have used to plan a pannier full of short, local training (alright pub) routes. Thanks Richard...hc
Richard Fairhurst
Posts: 2030
Joined: 2 Mar 2008, 4:57pm
Location: Charlbury, Oxfordshire

Re: New Route Planner

Post by Richard Fairhurst »

andrew_s wrote:I tried a route from Aviemore to Braemar, just to see what it did, and it came up with a crossing of the Lairig Ghru.

As of half an hour ago, it won't send you that way - it'll go round via Nethy Bridge instead. I'll write more about why in due course, but suffice it to say that it should now be better at finding sensible routes in rural Scotland.
cycle.travel - maps, journey-planner, route guides and city guides
johnonhisbike
Posts: 62
Joined: 10 Jan 2011, 2:20pm

Re: New Route Planner

Post by johnonhisbike »

Thanks ... looks like a really good site.
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simonineaston
Posts: 8003
Joined: 9 May 2007, 1:06pm
Location: ...at a cricket ground

Re: New Route Planner

Post by simonineaston »

Just tried the pdf option... I asked cycle.travel/map to suggest a route from Cosham Station to the Brittany Ferries terminal in Portsmouth and saved it, then clicked the pdf button and was very please with the results. It's a short route (3 miles) and so it should fit on a single side of A4 easily, and the software did just that, scaling it nicely to maximise the available space. I chose the City Scale option and got a great map, very clear and with a host of road names to help me navigate - excellent!
Sample of the pdf produced by cycle.travel
Sample of the pdf produced by cycle.travel
S
(on the look out for Armageddon, on board a Brompton nano & ever-changing Moultons)
geocycle
Posts: 2177
Joined: 11 Jan 2007, 9:46am

Re: New Route Planner

Post by geocycle »

Yes this is my favourite route planner. I find it very intuitive and it gives some sensible suggestions. I export gpx files to my garmin edge touring and these work well. The only bit that doesn't work is the elevation profile which appears as a flat line. The tcx export option doesn't work at all on the GET.
Richard Fairhurst
Posts: 2030
Joined: 2 Mar 2008, 4:57pm
Location: Charlbury, Oxfordshire

Re: New Route Planner

Post by Richard Fairhurst »

Richard Fairhurst wrote:
andrew_s wrote:I tried a route from Aviemore to Braemar, just to see what it did, and it came up with a crossing of the Lairig Ghru.

As of half an hour ago, it won't send you that way - it'll go round via Nethy Bridge instead. I'll write more about why in due course, but suffice it to say that it should now be better at finding sensible routes in rural Scotland.


Here's the full story!

The route-planner now uses real traffic data for A roads. So it knows that quiet rural roads in Scotland are absolutely fine for cycling, but will fight shy of A roads in London full of HGVs, even though both are officially white-signed non-primary A roads. It looks at motor traffic levels, HGV numbers, and bike numbers to estimate how good a road is for cycling. In this case, it looks at the A939, figures there's hardly any traffic on it, and therefore concludes it'll be a whole lot more enjoyable than lugging your bike over the Lairig Ghru.

Next challenge is to do the same for B roads, though the data for those is a bit less malleable and will require a lot of wrangling to get into shape.
cycle.travel - maps, journey-planner, route guides and city guides
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andrew_s
Posts: 5795
Joined: 7 Jan 2007, 9:29pm
Location: Gloucestershire

Re: New Route Planner

Post by andrew_s »

Richard Fairhurst wrote:Here's the full story!

For the quietest A road, I see your A844 on Bute, and raise you the A486 on Jura (not that that's a routefinding test, on account of the absence of alternatives).

Do I assume that the traffic data is the most recent available from some government source, rather than using the live phone tracking data that shows up on Google Maps?

The next step would be to ask for a time/day of week to avoid roads that were busy at commuting time, but fairly quiet otherwise :wink:
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jamesgilbert
Posts: 316
Joined: 5 Feb 2013, 4:25pm
Location: Lyon

Re: New Route Planner

Post by jamesgilbert »

This route planner is really very good, and I can confirm that it works fine for my city centre cycling in Paris.

As there seems to be no limit to what you can do, it would be nice if there was a link to the ferry details (for the Oban to Fort William example on your website), in the route directions...
sore thumb
Posts: 242
Joined: 7 Jan 2007, 10:27am

New Route Planner

Post by sore thumb »

Just did a route with the planner. For a commute of around 17 miles into birmingham.

I was looking at roads that are not too busy with traffic but provide a reasonable fast route for a cyclist as I average around 18 mph.

However the planner comes up with cycle paths and canal paths and my route has gone up from 17 miles to 20 miles. And a time from 2hrs 30mins when I could really do it in around an hour I think.

Is there anyway to put in my average speed so the planner removes slow routes but keep me off the 'main busy road sections' ?

Thoughts?
Richard Fairhurst
Posts: 2030
Joined: 2 Mar 2008, 4:57pm
Location: Charlbury, Oxfordshire

Re: New Route Planner

Post by Richard Fairhurst »

andrew_s wrote:Do I assume that the traffic data is the most recent available from some government source, rather than using the live phone tracking data that shows up on Google Maps?
Yep, exactly that.

jamesgilbert wrote:As there seems to be no limit to what you can do, it would be nice if there was a link to the ferry details (for the Oban to Fort William example on your website), in the route directions...
That's a brilliant idea. Will try and work that in.

andrew_s wrote:The next step would be to ask for a time/day of week to avoid roads that were busy at commuting time, but fairly quiet otherwise :wink:
sore thumb wrote:Is there anyway to put in my average speed so the planner removes slow routes but keep me off the 'main busy road sections' ?
Have to admit there is a limit to what I can do and it's that...!

Essentially all the routes are precomputed. This takes ages (12 hours for Western Europe) and lots of memory (128GB to precompute, then 16GB-ish permanently in memory for the router) but means that the response time is blisteringly fast - that's what enables dragging the route around, Google-style.

The corollary of that is that there's one routing profile. To have different preferences (e.g. less towpath), or different times of day, would mean another 16GB (and another 12 hours) for each possible variation. I think Google probably have enough servers for that but I don't! Also the 128GB server absolutely deafens me for the 12 hours that's it's running. ;)

If you don't like the route it's chosen for you, you can drag it onto another road - the total mileage updates as you do that. I'm aware the estimated times are a little conservative at the moment and I'm planning to put in an option so you can say how fast you cycle - i.e. so it says 1hr30 for a 23-mile route rather than 2hr30, if you see what I mean. But do have a play around with dragging the route.
cycle.travel - maps, journey-planner, route guides and city guides
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Peter Molog
Posts: 95
Joined: 16 Oct 2013, 11:45am
Location: The Netherlands

Re: New Route Planner

Post by Peter Molog »

Richard,

There are some dry lakes in Switserland. See also my posting on the OpenStreetMap forum.
Peter

Please, excuse my English. I'm Dutch.
Richard Fairhurst
Posts: 2030
Joined: 2 Mar 2008, 4:57pm
Location: Charlbury, Oxfordshire

Re: New Route Planner

Post by Richard Fairhurst »

That one's been puzzling me for a while now. I think it's an issue with the software that loads raw OSM data into the map database (osm2pgsql) - the mode I use it in appears to have problems with data which is both a lake and an administrative boundary. Still looking into it!
cycle.travel - maps, journey-planner, route guides and city guides
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