Ridewithgps No More

[Psamathe]

Ridewithgps is the latest website I use (once used..) fallen victim to the Net disease of, If it 'aint broke, it soon will be. They had, for a few years, a functional useful site, but then they decided to 'improve' it.

Every time you view one of your routes it now defaults to the new 'improved' view, which brilliantly, hides half the screen with a useless 'app, connectivity, iphonery' menu on the left. To return to the old, classic view, you must click on a menu and select, classic view. Every time. And there's no way to keep classic view as the default.

Also the Sign Out icon - which was located logically on the Home page has now been buried on the Help page. It took me 10 minutes to find that out. So another 2 extra clicks to leave.

Hindering of the user thus, requires immediate termination of such services. Bye RWGPS.

I never trusted their routes after a "test route" sent me down the A14 3 lane cross country trunk route from the Felixstowe container port - with no cycle lane. A route for a cyclist best described as "certain death". So why would a cycle routing site create a cycle route on such a road? Ans: its not really creating cycle routes.

Ian

Interesting. What settings did you use - optimise for driving perhaps? Have just plotted a route from Cambridge to Felixstowe port and nowhere does it use the A14. I had optimise for cycling selected.

The site is clearly called "Ride with GPS" NOT drive with GPS - so a cyclist using the default settings could reasonably expect to not to get a car route.

What would people think if they went to https://cycle.travel and it gave out car routes on main roads unless you changed some hidden setting. People would be "disappointed".

Ian

[Bez]

The site is clearly called "Ride with GPS" NOT drive with GPS - so a cyclist using the default settings could reasonably expect to not to get a car route.

I fully agree. The issue is a pragmatic one, though: neither "optimise for cycling" nor "optimise for driving" produce the best routes for the entire user base. People who like a calm, leisurely meander between quiet villages will often be better served by the former, but those who want to get out to cover miles rapidly will often be better served by the latter.

In both cases a lot of users will want to tweak parts of the route: obviously the driving mode can end up on horrible routes; the cycling mode can end up taking you on hideously slow and twiddly routes with lots of turns and frustratingly poor cycle paths.

To be honest, personally I find the "use driving mode and drag the nasty bits onto more suitable roads" is a far, far quicker way to build a good route than to use cycling mode and drag it away from labyrinthine faff. (The latter needs far more in the way of additional points to be created.)

But I agree with your sentiment. I think it would be good if RWGPS alerted new users, while planning their first route, to the fact that by default it errs on the side of faster and more direct roads, and that the option exists to prioritise quiet routes.

The ability to do both, along different sections of the same route, is one of RWGPS's strengths. The amount of control you have over the route, and perhaps more so the ease with which you can exert that control, is what sets it apart. It just could be a little easier to learn it, perhaps.

[Richard Fairhurst]

To some degree, there's a difference between "planner" and "plotter" - one works out the ride for you, the other provides tools to help you work out your own ride (or, as you say, "build" one). cycle.travel is mostly at the planner end of the scale, while RWGPS is more of a plotter and its feature set reflects that. (The extremes are probably CycleStreets for planning, and things like BikeHike or GPX Editor for plotting; I suspect there's probably a pretty direct correlation in the number of lines of code that each one dedicates to its weightings!)

I (fairly unsurprisingly) don't really use RWGPS myself but that's fine, I'm not its target market. I find the bike directions provided by A Certain Large Search Engine less excusable, which send complete newcomers on entirely unsuitable roads and paths with barely any warning.

Of course, what this ultimately proves is that there's no substitute for good infrastructure; if there were safe bike routes everywhere, the differences between algorithms would matter less. There's been many a time when I've been trying to refine cycle.travel's weightings, encountered a bizarre-looking route, thought "why's it doing that"... and discovered it's because the roads are no good. Optimising bike routes in Britain can sometimes be an exercise in polishing a turd.

[pete75]

I never trusted their routes after a "test route" sent me down the A14 3 lane cross country trunk route from the Felixstowe container port - with no cycle lane. A route for a cyclist best described as "certain death". So why would a cycle routing site create a cycle route on such a road? Ans: its not really creating cycle routes.

Ian

Interesting. What settings did you use - optimise for driving perhaps? Have just plotted a route from Cambridge to Felixstowe port and nowhere does it use the A14. I had optimise for cycling selected.

The site is clearly called "Ride with GPS" NOT drive with GPS - so a cyclist using the default settings could reasonably expect to not to get a car route.

What would people think if they went to https://cycle.travel and it gave out car routes on main roads unless you changed some hidden setting. People would be "disappointed".

Ian

The default setting is to optimise for cycling. The route mode setting is not hidden but is clearly displayed on the route planning page with the selected mode highlighted in orange.

[Psamathe]

Interesting. What settings did you use - optimise for driving perhaps? Have just plotted a route from Cambridge to Felixstowe port and nowhere does it use the A14. I had optimise for cycling selected.

The site is clearly called "Ride with GPS" NOT drive with GPS - so a cyclist using the default settings could reasonably expect to not to get a car route.

What would people think if they went to https://cycle.travel and it gave out car routes on main roads unless you changed some hidden setting. People would be "disappointed".

Ian

The default setting is to optimise for cycling. The route mode setting is not hidden but is clearly displayed on the route planning page with the selected mode highlighted in orange.

In which case the "certain death" route it gave me on the 3 lane A14 (without cycle lanes) demonstrates it is not a cycle route web site.

Ian

[Richard Fairhurst]

Yikes - you're right. Ask for a route from (say) Huntingdon to Spaldwick, a village a short way to the west, and it does choose the A14. That's brave.

[pete75]

Yikes - you're right. Ask for a route from (say) Huntingdon to Spaldwick, a village a short way to the west, and it does choose the A14. That's brave.

Have just put that route in and it goes alongside teh A14 on a shared path alongside teh road for just over half a mile.

[pete75]

The site is clearly called "Ride with GPS" NOT drive with GPS - so a cyclist using the default settings could reasonably expect to not to get a car route.

What would people think if they went to https://cycle.travel and it gave out car routes on main roads unless you changed some hidden setting. People would be "disappointed".

Ian

The default setting is to optimise for cycling. The route mode setting is not hidden but is clearly displayed on the route planning page with the selected mode highlighted in orange.

In which case the "certain death" route it gave me on the 3 lane A14 (without cycle lanes) demonstrates it is not a cycle route web site.

Ian

Where were you trying to route to and from?

[Richard Fairhurst]

Yikes - you're right. Ask for a route from (say) Huntingdon to Spaldwick, a village a short way to the west, and it does choose the A14. That's brave.

Have just put that route in and it goes alongside teh A14 on a shared path alongside teh road for just over half a mile.

If you have the Google map selected, then yes, it only gives you the half-mile you describe.

But if you have the OSM map selected, then mile 2.5 (junction 22) to mile 5 (junction 20 east), and mile 5.5 to mile 6.5, are all on the A14 proper. There is no shared-use path there to route along. It uses the shared-use path from mile 6.5 to 7.2.

I think they use Google routing when you have the Google map selected, and Graphhopper when you have any other map selected.

[Psamathe]

The default setting is to optimise for cycling. The route mode setting is not hidden but is clearly displayed on the route planning page with the selected mode highlighted in orange.

In which case the "certain death" route it gave me on the 3 lane A14 (without cycle lanes) demonstrates it is not a cycle route web site.

Ian

Where were you trying to route to and from?

Diss to Colchester (screen captures of the route https://forum.cyclinguk.org/viewtopic.php?f=16&t=122146&p=1240675&hilit=diss#p1240292)

And it does it with the settings set to "Optimise for Cycling". Same if Google map selected of OSM Cycle!

Ian

[pete75]

In which case the "certain death" route it gave me on the 3 lane A14 (without cycle lanes) demonstrates it is not a cycle route web site.

Ian

Where were you trying to route to and from?

Diss to Colchester (screen captures of the route https://forum.cyclinguk.org/viewtopic.php?f=16&t=122146&p=1240675&hilit=diss#p1240292)

And it does it with the settings set to "Optimise for Cycling". Same if Google map selected of OSM Cycle!

Ian

Tis a little odd - this is what I got on rwgps for the same route.

[Psamathe]

Where were you trying to route to and from?

Diss to Colchester (screen captures of the route https://forum.cyclinguk.org/viewtopic.php?f=16&t=122146&p=1240675&hilit=diss#p1240292)

And it does it with the settings set to "Optimise for Cycling". Same if Google map selected of OSM Cycle!

Ian

Tis a little odd - this is what I got on rwgps for the same route.

Capture22.JPG

I tried it a few minutes ago and got

17 is on the A140 (nasty road for cycling on) and 18, 19, 20 on the A14.

This route was created inputting Diss to start with, then Colchester to end and that is all. And hence my not accepting it as a site suitable for creating cycle routes.

Ian

[pete75]

Diss to Colchester (screen captures of the route https://forum.cyclinguk.org/viewtopic.php?f=16&t=122146&p=1240675&hilit=diss#p1240292)

And it does it with the settings set to "Optimise for Cycling". Same if Google map selected of OSM Cycle!

Ian

Tis a little odd - this is what I got on rwgps for the same route.

Capture22.JPG

I tried it a few minutes ago and got
Screen Shot 2018-09-11 at 22.43.17 copy.jpg
17 is on the A140 (nasty road for cycling on) and 18, 19, 20 on the A14.

Screen Shot 2018-09-11 at 22.45.02.png

This route was created inputting Diss to start with, then Colchester to end and that is all. And hence my not accepting it as a site suitable for creating cycle routes.

Ian

We obviously have different settings then. I've been using it for years without problems.

[Paulatic]

One of my test routes for mapping is home to Ae cafe.
Cycle travel goes the way I’d usually go
RwGPS goes the way I’d never go. Over 4 Miles on the A701 using 'cycling' and avoiding highways!

RwGPS

CycleTravel