The routing engine will choose routes that cross fords. I think this is the right routing decision - in many cases the fords are readily crossed. Here is one that is not safe to cross after a rainy day.
Perhaps fords could be more prominent on the map view or mentioned in turn by turn directions. Then the rider could make a judgment call ahead of time based on weather and the size of the river.
Workaround: Some of the OSM map layers indicate fords at high zoom levels, but this is pretty cumbersome to inspect for a full route.
Or maybe this is unique to New Zealand 😀 and an edge case. I have encountered both bridges and fords on both paved and unpaved roads.
Comments
I would really like to do this – in fact it’s been on the to-do list for a while now!
The complication is that there’s two ways of mapping fords in OpenStreetMap: on a node (point) or on a way (line). I could do the nodes fairly easily, but ways are more complex – it requires a way of ‘bouncing down’ the information to the constituent nodes, and I don’t have a way of doing that at present. But it’s definitely something that’s on the radar.
Richard - understood. Thanks for taking it under consideration.
I'd like to "up vote" the ford handling.
I fell foul of that (just a few km detour) Worcester to Coventry recently. Luckily I saw a sign ("Ford") at ajunction a mile or so before and white man van confirm it was alsost knee deep.
I then nearly routed along the same road planning Kidderminster to Banbury - that trip is not till June so may be dry but.....
Watch this space…
I saw in the newsletter that fords are now indicated in the turn by turn directions. Thanks Richard!