Cycle Travel Question

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

Re: New Route Planner

Post by Richard Fairhurst »

Looking at the A10 in Google Street View, you're not cycling on the road - you're cycling on a separate path - so it's best to map it as a separate path. In practice it's very, very difficult to render that as a path rather than an on-carriageway facility (you could do some stuff with Mapnik offsets, but it'd get really complicated fast) unless it's mapped separately.

A quick search suggests that the Oxford Street issue is an OSRM bug but I'll look further into it.
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simonineaston
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Re: New Route Planner

Post by simonineaston »

Quick Q. I enjoy using cycle.travel, in 3 different browsers, Safari at home, and both Chrome and IE at work... am I right in thinking that the Start and End of route markers behave differently depending on which browser I'm using? Sometimes I can DragNDrop them, sometimes I can't...
S
(on the look out for Armageddon, on board a Brompton nano & ever-changing Moultons)
Richard Fairhurst
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Joined: 2 Mar 2008, 4:57pm
Location: Charlbury, Oxfordshire

Re: New Route Planner

Post by Richard Fairhurst »

I've just run a full update of the map and routing for the UK, Western Europe and North America - it takes about four days in total on a very loud server which sits just a couple of metres behind my desk, so it's nice to have my hearing back. :)

There's a few little fixes, but the most significant one in the UK is that I'm now using motor traffic data for some B roads as well - so it won't route along the very busiest if it can avoid it, but conversely, doesn't look for an alternative if the B road is quiet. A couple of examples:

* http://cycle.travel/map?from=52.4883,-2 ... 25,-3.0865 - happy to go along the quiet B road out of Bishop's Castle, rather than the fairly brutal hill on the NCN route
* http://cycle.travel/map?from=Inverness& ... O%27Groats - now takes the B road route after the Crask Inn, rather than going via Tongue

B road traffic data is much less complete than A road data, and not so easy to work with, so it doesn't cover everything. But I've tried to concentrate on the quietest and busiest, which I figured will have the best effect on the routing. Hope it's useful to people!
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Mistik-ka
Posts: 505
Joined: 5 Feb 2012, 10:01pm
Location: Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, Canada

Re: New Route Planner

Post by Mistik-ka »

As always, Richard, thanks for your work on cycle.travel. I'm glad you've got your hearing back.

I don't think this is a bug in the system, or anything that needs correction, but I thought you might enjoy imagining the look on my face when, from my study in Saskatchewan, Canada, I clicked on your second example and was shown a 1270 mile route from Inverness, Illinois to John-O-Groats Court, Billings, Montana. :shock:

It sorted itself out when I entered the start and end points, stipulating "Scotland". (When I tried "UK" things got even worse, starting the route from Inverness, Maine! I wonder if there's a die-hard Scottish nationalist lurking in the system?)

The first example worked just fine, but I take note that I may have to double-check the results when I send a cycle.travel route link from our next British cycling tour to one of my friends back home in North America.

(Incidentally, I don't think I'll be bicycling to Billings, Montana or anywhere else this morning: I awoke to our first snowstorm of the year, with the wind gusting to 55 mph.) :(
Ann Kennedy
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Joined: 29 Jun 2008, 12:58pm

Re: New Route Planner

Post by Ann Kennedy »

I've just had a play with this and think it's fab. I planned a route from my home to my mother's - 184 miles of which only 1.4 miles was on major roads - the first bit of major road was local and i know a way round so adjusted. But i'd like to look at the other major bits to understand what they are like (the photos are great!) but i can't find an easy way to jump to the next bit of A road without scanning through all the directions? Am i missing a trick?
Richard Fairhurst
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Joined: 2 Mar 2008, 4:57pm
Location: Charlbury, Oxfordshire

Re: New Route Planner

Post by Richard Fairhurst »

Not yet - it doesn't highlight busy roads as it does offroad bits, though I'd like to add something along those lines in due course!
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Ann Kennedy
Posts: 41
Joined: 29 Jun 2008, 12:58pm

Re: New Route Planner

Post by Ann Kennedy »

I need a like button!
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Peter Molog
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Joined: 16 Oct 2013, 11:45am
Location: The Netherlands

Re: New Route Planner

Post by Peter Molog »

Hi Richard,

I discovered a minor problem, but I'm unsure of the consequences.
Sometimes on the green (unsurfaced) parts of a route there is an extra straight line visible on the map.
See this one: http://cycle.travel/map/journey/18580

It does not show in the downloaded GPS-file.
But when it occurres on a track, you can reproduce it on the same spot.

I'm not educated enough in OSM to understand what's wrong, but maybe you are :D :lol:
Peter

Please, excuse my English. I'm Dutch.
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andrew_s
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Location: Gloucestershire

Re: New Route Planner

Post by andrew_s »

It looks like a bug in the green line drawing to me.

It will be happening because one of the sections of path is reversed with respect to the others.

If you've got a route with 3 sections, and 1 and 3 are forwards but 2 is reversed (compared to the overall start --> end direction), the highlight line goes along section 1 to the end of section 1, then jumps to the start of section 2, which is at the far end because it's reversed, along section 2 to the end (which is next to the end of section 1), then jumps to the start of section 3 (next to the start of section 2), and follows section 3 to the end. The 2 jumps show as the straight line.
Richard Fairhurst
Posts: 2030
Joined: 2 Mar 2008, 4:57pm
Location: Charlbury, Oxfordshire

Re: New Route Planner

Post by Richard Fairhurst »

It is a bug. Or, was! I think I've fixed it now. Thanks for spotting. (exits, cursing Javascript...)
cycle.travel - maps, journey-planner, route guides and city guides
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Peter Molog
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Location: The Netherlands

Re: New Route Planner

Post by Peter Molog »

Richard Fairhurst wrote:cursing Javascript...

Well, it looks very neat now.

Thanks.
Peter

Please, excuse my English. I'm Dutch.
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meic
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Re: New Route Planner

Post by meic »

THANKS FOR A WONDERFUL RESOURCE!

I just wanted to make that clear before I have a little whinge.

I have recently finished a ride through France of 530 miles each way, which was plotted on Cycle.travel and 510 miles of it was pretty good. Took me nicely through Paris and Orleans without fear of my life at the hands of French drivers.
However it did take me on some dire paths that had me spitting fury and venom and cursing everything from my GPS to the entire French nation.
Sometimes it was due to obvious recent developments, road closures or new builds. Other times, I was exactly following the GPS track and it was an established footpath or farm track but so bad that I could not cycle on it.
One farm track in Flanders left me looking like some of the British visitors to the region 100 years before and I spent a couple of hours hosing myself, panniers and bike down with a graveyard tap.

I appreciate from looking at maps that I was caught in bottle necks between motorways, airports, rivers and canals. So at that time it appears to sink to accepting "anything passable" rather than decent tracks.

I dont know if the programming can (or should) be tweaked, or if we just have to realise that it may throw such things at us. I did see the description had the words "unpaved roads x km" or such, but it often says something like that. Mapping, no matter how good, cant provide a decent cycling surface for me to ride on, when one doesnt even exist!

I would just like to repeat that I do find it a valuable resource and I am very grateful for somebody providing it for me to use, costing me absolutely nothing.
Yma o Hyd
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simonineaston
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Re: New Route Planner

Post by simonineaston »

meic wrote:However it did take me on some dire paths that had me spitting fury and venom and cursing everything from my GPS to the entire French nation...
I suppose that's a possible consequence of relinquishing autonomy to an on-line resource - I'm not casting nasturtiums at Meic - I'm simply reflecting on the times I've ridden in France with nothing but a paper map and my own inclinations to dictate my route. Many is the time I've cursed my own judgement in much the same way I imagine Meic cursed the GPS and the poor unsuspecting French, when he found himself going wrong... plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose, as they say! ;-)
S
(on the look out for Armageddon, on board a Brompton nano & ever-changing Moultons)
Richard Fairhurst
Posts: 2030
Joined: 2 Mar 2008, 4:57pm
Location: Charlbury, Oxfordshire

Re: New Route Planner

Post by Richard Fairhurst »

meic wrote:However it did take me on some dire paths that had me spitting fury and venom and cursing everything from my GPS to the entire French nation.
Sometimes it was due to obvious recent developments, road closures or new builds. Other times, I was exactly following the GPS track and it was an established footpath or farm track but so bad that I could not cycle on it.
One farm track in Flanders left me looking like some of the British visitors to the region 100 years before and I spent a couple of hours hosing myself, panniers and bike down with a graveyard tap.

I appreciate from looking at maps that I was caught in bottle necks between motorways, airports, rivers and canals. So at that time it appears to sink to accepting "anything passable" rather than decent tracks.


Eek - sorry!

Yes, that's mostly the reason - when there's a bottleneck and it can't find its favoured options (minor roads or cycleways). It's almost always because someone has just mapped it in OpenStreetMap as a "track" without any surface information, so cycle.travel has to guess what the surface might be.

Coincidentally I'd actually noticed this problem the other week, and have tweaked the weightings accordingly. So I've just (yesterday) uploaded a new version of the routing database which is much more sceptical about tracks in Europe without any surface information - it now only gives them 40% of the score that it used to give them (basically, it assumes they're dirt rather than gravel). I'd be intrigued to hear what it does if you now try and plan a similar route - hopefully it should be less keen to take you along such a track. But sorry again.

If it helps, when you're planning a route, the blue highlight becomes green for unpaved sections - so you can zoom in on the route, look at Street View pics if there are any (or Geograph in Britain), and drag it away.

(Lots more changes in the new version - the biggest changes in the routing algorithm since the first version. I'll write more about it in a day or two!)
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mjr
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Re: New Route Planner

Post by mjr »

Would it be possible to put green boxes around the unpaved/greenway section in the directions too, please? It can be hard to spot them on the map on longer journeys sometimes.

Still great. We rode the Lynnsport- Fakenham- Lynnsport route it plotted a couple of years ago and it's still fabulous.
MJR, mostly pedalling 3-speed roadsters. KL+West Norfolk BUG incl social easy rides http://www.klwnbug.co.uk
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