Hey, I really do love cycle.travel, and evangelise when I can. However I probably should have taken more care planning my latest (long) ride, because the fully automatic cycle.travel route sent me down a really, really terrible road. It was this: https://cycle.travel/map?lat=51.3436&lon=-0.6788&zoom=15 , the "Red Road" just south of Lightwater. It was so busy, full of 50mph aggressive traffic, that I thought I'd made a mistake. But I've just re-created the route and, indeed, it goes along that road. There's no verge or hard shoulder or cycle path or pavement.
I realise this is a moan, but I would strongly encourage looking at the algorithm if this is common. I'm used to traffic but this was like being on an A-road, even though it's marked as "B".
Comments
Update: there's even a news article about how dangerous this road is: https://www.getsurrey.co.uk/news/surrey-news/lightwaters-deadly-red-road-residents-13893842
Ugh, that doesn’t look pleasant!
B-roads are difficult – they can vary from a horrible road like this one to a delightful quiet amble through the countryside.
cycle.travel uses real traffic data where possible to tell the difference. Unfortunately the Department for Transport data doesn’t include any traffic figures for the B311, so cycle.travel doesn’t know how unpleasant this one is. And although c.t prefers minor roads and cycleways to B-roads in general, the adjoining MOD area means there aren’t really any alternative minor roads around to choose.
I’ll see if there’s any data I can find to adjust things in this case, but I suspect this isn’t going to be an easy one to fix!
Understood! Really appreciate you taking the time to tweak :) ... I guess this just shows how valuable good traffic data can be.