Cycle Travel Question

Cycle-touring, Expeditions, Adventures, Major cycle routes NOT LeJoG (see other special board)
ChrisF
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Re: Cycle Travel Question

Post by ChrisF »

Richard Fairhurst wrote: 28 Apr 2021, 5:21pm Right, I have poked the fiendishly complex climb calculation algorithm for the n (hundred)th time. It should be less likely to underestimate flattish routes now. You'll probably find it's still lower than other sites calculate, but I'm happy with that!
Thanks, Richard, I can also confirm that (for the two flattish routes done since my comment above), the elevation on c.t. is more than it would have been before, and therefore closer to the Wahoo Roam.
Chris F, Cornwall
pal
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Re: Cycle Travel Question

Post by pal »

Hi Richard. First (and belatedly): very many thanks for cycle.travel, and for all the work you've done on it. (It was good to see the name-check in the Guardian travel section this weekend!)

Second, a v. small thing -- but I thought perhaps worth mentioning since it affects a quite well-used route (the Walney to Wear path): just on the edge of Sunderland, cycle.travel generates a small detour off the cycle path, round a couple of suburban streets (and also up a small extra hill, if you're coming south...), and then back to the path: https://cycle.travel/map?from=Sr3%202qp ... mLL=&toLL= (it does this when planning a route in either direction). I've had a look at OSM, and can't see anything obvious which would be causing this (though I'm v. much an OSM amateur, so might be missing something; might some of the barriers be wrongly tagged?). Anyway: any ideas v. welcome (though I appreciate that your to-do list is a long one -- obv this isn't top priority!).
Richard Fairhurst
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Re: Cycle Travel Question

Post by Richard Fairhurst »

Someone had marked a motorbike barrier on the path as a stile, and cycle.travel won't route through stiles. I've tweaked it on OSM so it'll be reflected on cycle.travel next time I take an update.
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pal
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Re: Cycle Travel Question

Post by pal »

Aha! Many thanks for the explanation, and for fixing it (I'll know what to look out for next time...)
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mjr
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Re: Cycle Travel Question

Post by mjr »

Richard Fairhurst wrote: 2 May 2021, 1:17pm Someone had marked a motorbike barrier on the path as a stile, and cycle.travel won't route through stiles.
Will it route through horse (low) stiles? What is the minimum width of an entrance or path it will route through? 1m? 1.2?
MJR, mostly pedalling 3-speed roadsters. KL+West Norfolk BUG incl social easy rides http://www.klwnbug.co.uk
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Psamathe
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Re: Cycle Travel Question

Post by Psamathe »

mjr wrote: 2 May 2021, 5:30pm
Richard Fairhurst wrote: 2 May 2021, 1:17pm Someone had marked a motorbike barrier on the path as a stile, and cycle.travel won't route through stiles.
Will it route through horse (low) stiles? What is the minimum width of an entrance or path it will route through? 1m? 1.2?
Good question and one I hadn't thought of and very relevant now as I'm 33" wide! (then add a bit so there is some gap after width of bike).

Ian
Richard Fairhurst
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Re: Cycle Travel Question

Post by Richard Fairhurst »

mjr wrote: 2 May 2021, 5:30pmWill it route through horse (low) stiles? What is the minimum width of an entrance or path it will route through? 1m? 1.2?
If the OSM surveyor has marked it as passable by bikes (i.e. bicycle=yes) it'll route through. I've never seen stile width tagged in OSM and taginfo doesn't report that it's done, though taginfo does have a minimum threshold for reporting combinations.

c.t understands horse stiles as "passable but inconvenient"!

I'd like it to parse stiles on bridleways (or, indeed, roads) as "probably a tagging mistake" rather than an absolute barrier. But that'll require some open-heart surgery on the routing engine first.
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mjr
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Re: Cycle Travel Question

Post by mjr »

Richard Fairhurst wrote: 2 May 2021, 7:25pm
mjr wrote: 2 May 2021, 5:30pmWill it route through horse (low) stiles? What is the minimum width of an entrance or path it will route through? 1m? 1.2?
If the OSM surveyor has marked it as passable by bikes (i.e. bicycle=yes) it'll route through. I've never seen stile width tagged in OSM and taginfo doesn't report that it's done, though taginfo does have a minimum threshold for reporting combinations.
Yeah, I was asking about widths of entrance or barrier nodes, and ways, having moved on from stiles.
MJR, mostly pedalling 3-speed roadsters. KL+West Norfolk BUG incl social easy rides http://www.klwnbug.co.uk
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BeardyWeirdy
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Re: Cycle Travel Question

Post by BeardyWeirdy »

Richard Fairhurst wrote: 2 May 2021, 7:25pm
I'd like it to parse stiles on bridleways (or, indeed, roads) as "probably a tagging mistake" rather than an absolute barrier. But that'll require some open-heart surgery on the routing engine first.
Could you extract them ad set up a map roulette task for them - I am sure for the uk we could sort through them quite quickly between us?

https://maproulette.org/browse/challenges
SA_SA_SA
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Re: Cycle Travel Question

Post by SA_SA_SA »

When I asked about a manual routing mode earlier perhaps it was misleading:

When using cycle travel I usually start with auto route between two points and then tweak it but it woukd be useful if further autorouting could ve paused, as I add a new via to counter some unecessary very short side trips into quieter streets but then the auto route will often detour my correction into new very short quiet diversions... repeat....

In this previous response
https://forum.cyclinguk.org/viewtopic. ... #p1481678 you hinted at allowing routing only being performed on current subsection to save processing time, which if possible, might imply routing could be turned off and on for all subsections i.e. whole map:

But you did say '...But it'll require quite a lot of code changes... ' , so perhaps it required even more?
I do know from experience that what seemed a small improvement to the user might require an unexpected amount of code change if not anticipated by programmer :oops: :) .



As a different idea could you maintain 2 databases, the current quiet routes maximised 'proper' one and another minimising short detours onto quiet roads, especially in urban areas, if this could be done, and if autorouting can be limited to current section only then could this be switched to, via button, when correcting between via points, after a rough 'proper" auto route has been done?

Thanks for all the maps... :D
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Richard Fairhurst
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Re: Cycle Travel Question

Post by Richard Fairhurst »

mjr wrote: 2 May 2021, 10:00pmYeah, I was asking about widths of entrance or barrier nodes, and ways, having moved on from stiles.
It's not something I've seen widely tagged in OSM (and where it is, it's often wrong, in particular with some DfT-derived data used about 10 years ago that was wildly wrong on a lot of path widths and which was unthinkingly brought into OSM in some cases). If there's an existing tag combination that signals "absolutely impassable" but which cycle.travel is routing through, let me know; and if fine-grained width tagging becomes more commonplace I'll look at adding something more nuanced. I'm slightly hesitant to add support until the data is less partial - you run the risk of routing somewhere that's not any better, but just has less complete information. (This is a huge issue when routing in the States, in particular!)
BeardyWeirdy wrote: 3 May 2021, 10:22am
Richard Fairhurst wrote: 2 May 2021, 7:25pm
I'd like it to parse stiles on bridleways (or, indeed, roads) as "probably a tagging mistake" rather than an absolute barrier. But that'll require some open-heart surgery on the routing engine first.
Could you extract them ad set up a map roulette task for them - I am sure for the uk we could sort through them quite quickly between us?

https://maproulette.org/browse/challenges
You can actually find them quite quickly using Overpass Turbo:

Code: Select all

[out:json][bbox:50.9728,-2.9359,52.7714,-0.0227];
way[highway=bridleway] -> .bridleways;
node[barrier=stile](w.bridleways);
out qt 100;
(adjusting the bounding box to suit)

But I wouldn't suggest doing it in an automated/semi-automated way - last time I tried some manual fixup on this I got growled at by a muppet who thought there might genuinely be a load of stiles on bridleways, and frankly I lost the will to argue. :(
SA_SA_SA wrote: 3 May 2021, 9:50pm As a different idea could you maintain 2 databases, the current quiet routes maximised 'proper' one and another minimising short detours onto quiet roads, especially in urban areas, if this could be done, and if autorouting can be limited to current section only then could this be switched to, via button, when correcting between via points, after a rough 'proper" auto route has been done?
That's certainly possible - cycle.travel has two routing graphs as it is, the normal one and the paved-only one. But as always, maintaining more databases means renting more servers, which means paying more money! It honestly isn't a priority for me at the moment I'm afraid - there are lots of things I want to improve/build on cycle.travel, and a "less quiet" mode is not high on that list. Sorry.
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Richard Fairhurst
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Re: Cycle Travel Question

Post by Richard Fairhurst »

Here's something new... alternative routes!
Screenshot 2021-05-07 at 12.46.12.png
Plan your route as normal, with just a start and end point. But if you then want to see an alternative, click the "Find alternative" button that will have appeared. It will find an alternative and display both at the same time: click the one you want.

It'll usually find one alternative route, but occasionally two (and sometimes none). It can work for really long routes - try Saint Malo to Nice, for example, and the first choice goes via the upper Loire and Rhone, while the alternative runs parallel to the Atlantic coast before heading along the Canal du Midi. If it doesn't find one, sometimes you can nudge it by just looking for a shorter section (it won't find an alternative for Land's End–John O'Groats, for example, but will do so for Land's End—Edinburgh).
cycle.travel - maps, journey-planner, route guides and city guides
Bmblbzzz
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Re: Cycle Travel Question

Post by Bmblbzzz »

I like this new ability. :D
Angstrom
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Re: Cycle Travel Question

Post by Angstrom »

Nice addition to an already very well thought out site/app for bike touring.

If the 2 route proposals could be left available longer to allow for a more thorough comparison, it would be even more useful. Allowing to open one route or the other in a new tab would do the job.
"A cycle tourist doesn't have a track record. Just memories". Jean Taboureau
Psamathe
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Re: Cycle Travel Question

Post by Psamathe »

Excellent new feature.

Ian
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