Cycle Travel Question

[Bmblbzzz]

Perhaps this just reflects the mish-mash of units in everyday use in Britain after four decades of metrication and counter-metrication?

[LollyKat]

Probably - we had a book on nutrition published by HMSO that had tables such as protein content of different food give in grams per ounce!

[LollyKat]

How can I reverse a route?

Riding in cities, retracing my steps is not always the best option thanks to one-way systems and difficult junctions. Would it be possible to have a button that would reverse the inputs in the From / To boxes on the get-a-route page? There is a little icon with a curly arrow but it doesn't seem to do anything. At the moment I have to retype the start and destination which seems a bit clunky (but I am not a programmer so what do I know!)

[kilroya]

Just registered, in Ireland here.
Very good resource.
Thanks Richard.
Was wanting an easy way to plan "quiet roads" and this is perfect.
Can't wait to put the panniers on now and head....

[rich_e]

Just wanted to add my appreciation for this resource. This is my default routing service now. The fact that you can easily edit a route by dragging a point to a certain path is an added bonus. Thank you.

[Richard Fairhurst]

How can I reverse a route?

I've just added a brand new reverse route button - try it and see. I've been meaning to add this for a while but your message pushed me into finishing it! The reverse route will often be subtly different because of one-way streets and turn penalties (e.g. right turns across roads), and on occasion this can tip the balance to a whole new route.

rich_e and kilroya - really glad you like it!

[Graham]

Reverse route facility : very clever. Thanks for that.

Richard - the start/end postcode facility been removed/lost. I can work around it easily enough, but is there a reason for this tragic loss ?

[Paulatic]

Reverse route facility : very clever. Thanks for that.

Richard - the start/end postcode facility been removed/lost. I can work around it easily enough, but is there a reason for this tragic loss ?

Postcode Working fine here

[Richard Fairhurst]

Incompetence on my part probably. But that said it's working for me - if I punch in (say) OX7 3PH to LE15 6HF then it finds a route. I did just find a little edge case that I've fixed, but if it's still not working, could you let me know the postcode (by PM if necessary) and I can take a look?

[Graham]

Ah ha, I have just tried it using Uppercase letters and it works fine. Thanks for investigating.

I am pretty sure that I have always previously used lowercase letters in my postcode.
That suddenly stopped working a few weeks ago - coinciding with some big ( route algorithm ? ) change.
PS. This bit is anecdotal and may be completely demented.

[RickH]

How can I reverse a route?

I've just added a brand new reverse route button - try it and see. I've been meaning to add this for a while but your message pushed me into finishing it! The reverse route will often be subtly different because of one-way streets and turn penalties (e.g. right turns across roads), and on occasion this can tip the balance to a whole new route.

rich_e and kilroya - really glad you like it!

Great I really like the reverse route.

But (you just knew there was a "but" coming ) there seems to be a glitch if you add a via point to a round-trip route. If you have done so it moves the start (&/or finish if there is more than one via point) to one of the added via points when you hit reverse.

Rick.

[LollyKat]

How can I reverse a route?

I've just added a brand new reverse route button - try it and see. I've been meaning to add this for a while but your message pushed me into finishing it! The reverse route will often be subtly different because of one-way streets and turn penalties (e.g. right turns across roads), and on occasion this can tip the balance to a whole new route.

Brilliant - when I saw the new button I guessed that was what it was. Thanks very much.

Out of interest - what does the button with the single curved arrow do? The one thing I've always found a little disconcerting is that there is no help or FAQ page, no tips when hovering over icons, nothing for new users. (I remember in the early days having to ask here how to undo a route change I'd made - it kept jumping around like crazy and I couldn't correct silly choices.)

It all works much better now and I'm beginning to use it more - many thanks for all your work.

[Richard Fairhurst]

Single curved arrow is 'undo'! When there's something to undo, hovering over it should (after a second) say "Undo reverse", or "Undo move", or whatever. You're right, though, I should add some help pages.

RickH - is that a newly planned circular route or an older one?

[RickH]

RickH - is that a newly planned circular route or an older one?

That was s a newly planned route (not saved).

Click start point on map, click end point, click "round-trip", add via point to modify route, click reverse & start/finish changes to added via point(s). Edited to add - a manually created route seems to work fine with start & finish always staying where they were.

Another bug I've found is that, once you've reversed the route, undo only switches the reversal back and forth it never goes back to removing via points added before the reverse (but will remove ones added after reversing until undo gets back to the reverse step).

Rick.

[Richard Fairhurst]

Ah, I see. The shifting start/finish is pretty much an artefact of the way the circular route creation works at present - it's on the list to revisit at a later date. I've fixed the reverse undo issue - thanks for spotting!

One more little thing just added...

I know quite a lot of people like to plan their routes by clicking one point after another, particularly if you're used to route-planners that work that way (e.g. BikeHike). Sometimes this means you end up with a route with lots of unnecessary 'via' points. For example, if you plan a route with via points at A,B,C,D,E,F,G and H, you might find that the route from A to D would have gone through B and C anyway, so you could have got away with fewer clicks - and having fewer points makes the route easier to edit.

So if you plot a route with lots of points, you'll now see a little box appear on the left asking if you want to get rid of unneeded points. Click 'yes', and it'll go through and find any that can be safely removed without changing the route.

Quick example - try http://cycle.travel/map/journey/8874 and click 'Yes'; it goes down from 31 to 26 via points but the route stays the same!