Cycle Travel Question

[mjr]

Plus one more fun new feature today: col/pass names on the elevation graph!

When does it add the names and where does it get them from? I plotted a bit of the Amstel Gold and the recent TdF stage over Col de la Loze and neither of them were named.

Have you changed the thresholds for the colours? The elevation graphs on my routes seem to have become a lot more monochromatic.

[Richard Fairhurst]

Plus one more fun new feature today: col/pass names on the elevation graph!

When does it add the names and where does it get them from? I plotted a bit of the Amstel Gold and the recent TdF stage over Col de la Loze and neither of them were named.

From OSM, but it requires them to be tagged properly (as ever!). So a node with either mountain_pass=yes or natural=saddle, plus a name, on the way itself. The Col de la Loze is just tagged as a "locality" at present - moving it to be a saddle on the road would be a useful improvement.

Have you changed the thresholds for the colours? The elevation graphs on my routes seem to have become a lot more monochromatic.

I've been playing around with it a little. If there's an example route that seems less clear then let me know what it is!

[Angstrom]

Very nice improvements Richard. Thank you.

By the way I went up Col de l'Iseran this summer (among others) and I think the new way to calculate the graph is a definite improvement, at least for mountainous terrain. It might puzzle UK cyclits where there are very steep but short hills but for me it is better.
Cycle.Travel does indicate the value in % of the steepest section so I believe it is a matter of explaining (as you've done) how the graph "thinks" and emphasizing to check both the graph and steepest gradient to get a good indication of a route's difficulty.

On another note: the desktop version is now available in French. Great!
Any time schedule for the mobile version?

[gloomyandy]

Hi Richard,
unfortunately the link to Garmin Connect does not seem to work for me. I followed your instructions and got the popup login box for Garmin Connect and all that went well, however every time I try to send a course I get a pop up box saying "Sorry, the link between your Garmin Connect account and your cycle.travel account failed. Please set Garmin Connect's Applications settings to share Courses data with cycle.travel." I've checked and Garmin Connect is already authorised to share course data with cycle.travel. Any suggestions?

Thanks

[Richard Fairhurst]

If you could drop me an email (richard@cycle.travel) immediately after it happens, I can look through the logs..

[gloomyandy]

@Richard email sent.

[mjr]

Have you changed the thresholds for the colours? The elevation graphs on my routes seem to have become a lot more monochromatic.

I've been playing around with it a little. If there's an example route that seems less clear then let me know what it is!

https://cycle.travel/map/journey/6537 or most stuff in East Anglia. https://cycle.travel/map/journey/43401 is maybe the hilliest course in my valley yet barely gets any. The old threshold for some colour seemed about 4.5% and seemed about right to warn of a climb most would notice.

Oddly https://cycle.travel/map/journey/90800 colours a hill not coloured on the above. Surely the colouring shouldn't differ that much with route length?

[Richard Fairhurst]

Couple of teething problems ironed out now and it's all running happily. I hate computers sometimes. (Thanks gloomyandy for spotting!)

@mjr - I'll look - I think there's probably a bit of tweaking I can do to make sure small climbs always show up.

[Angstrom]

@mjr - I'll look - I think there's probably a bit of tweaking I can do to make sure small climbs always show up.

I know some apps slice the track in steps of different lengths depending on hill length.
1 km for the long ones (as most sites present altigraphs, as well as signs on the roads up to these cols) and possibly 50 to 100 meters for the small ones.
I have no idea of how difficult it would be to program but that would be meaningful for users.

[Pendodave]

For a couple if trips I've done recently, which were full of short nasty climbs, the new shading misses out some useful details - identifying the bits i would need to push that were displayed before!
Would it be possible to offer some cookie stored customisation of the slope breaks and length parameters?

On a slight tangent, longer routes (>50miles?) show the profile but not the shading. This isnt' a new thing, it's always done it for me, but I thought I'd mention it while I was here.

Not intending to be churlish, as someone new to cycling away from home it's been a fabulous tool, thanks for working so hard on it.

[gloomyandy]

Thanks Richard for the super fast response! Yes all working now.

On climbs, one thing I've noticed is that the Max value for climbs does not always show the actual steepest percentage. Is there some sort of smoothing being applied? So for instance with this route: https://cycle.travel/map/journey/183919 the max shows 15.2% but if you actually mouse over the steep part of the height profile the popup shows 16% in places. I've had more extreme versions of this on other routes with very steep climbs on it not really showing up in the max field. Of course it is all a little subjective as exactly how you measure steepness is tricky, but a few times I've had moans from the folks I ride with when rides that looked to only have a max of 10% actually contained "hidden climbs" that are steeper!

[Richard Fairhurst]

For a couple if trips I've done recently, which were full of short nasty climbs, the new shading misses out some useful details - identifying the bits i would need to push that were displayed before!

If you could let me know the routes that'd be helpful - then I can test against that.

On a slight tangent, longer routes (>50miles?) show the profile but not the shading. This isnt' a new thing, it's always done it for me, but I thought I'd mention it while I was here.

Yep - basically for longer routes it samples the elevation less often, so the gradient calculation would be less reliable. It's a performance thing to keep the server running fast (calculating the elevation is a little on the slow side). I might see if I can up the cut-off in due course - it would be good to have it for 60-mile routes but not for 3500 miles across America!

[andrew_s]

Of course it is all a little subjective as exactly how you measure steepness is tricky, but a few times I've had moans from the folks I ride with when rides that looked to only have a max of 10% actually contained "hidden climbs" that are steeper!

You shouldn't expect too much precision, as the source data is relatively crude (assuming that Richard has used NASA SRTM data, or maybe OS Terrain 50 DTM in the UK)
You'll always get a better answer by going out and riding a hill, using a barometric GPS, than you will using average heights for 30 - 50 metre squares.

By way of an example, Winnat's (26.6%) shows up as being steeper than Hardknott (25.1%), and having ridden both (the former on 46x28), I can assure you that that's not the case

[gloomyandy]

You shouldn't expect too much precision, as the source data is relatively crude (assuming that Richard has used NASA SRTM data, or maybe OS Terrain 50 DTM in the UK)
You'll always get a better answer by going out and riding a hill, using a barometric GPS, than you will using average heights for 30 - 50 metre squares.

By way of an example, Winnat's (26.6%) shows up as being steeper than Hardknott (25.1%), and having ridden both (the former on 46x28), I can assure you that that's not the case

Yes I appreciate that the underlying data may not always match reality. But in this case there is an inconstancy within cycle travel itself. In the example I posted the Max field shows one value but mousing over the height graph you can find sections that show up steeper in the popup data. So either the graph popup information is incorrect (or is being calculated in a different way), or the Max gradient information is wrong.

[aflook]

Life is full of unexpected steep bits, my cycle routes doubly so, but I don't think it's the fault of Cycle.travel.

Does anyone know why Cycle.travel won't let me route through Abney in Derbyshire? the road is closed to cars but open to pedestrians, equestrians and cyclists. A bit frustrating as a lot of my routes from Sheffield pass that way and it's harder to calculate distance or requires two separate GPX files.

Still use Cycle.travel as my route planner/castles in the air site...