I have been doing my part to tidy up the OSM green lanes and bridleways in the Bristol area. I’ve come across a few routing issues where cycle.travel will not route particular highways=tracks. The nodes at each end are correctly linked but the section is always avoided. What fields does cycle.travel look at when choosing to navigate these or not? Am I right in saying it wont use routes with a mtb:scale=3 or above?
Also, how often does cycle.travel pull through the new data from OSM.
Thanks
Comments
It won’t route on anything with mtb:scale of 2 or worse. http://www.singletrail-skala.de/s2 looks a bit gnarly for cycle.travel!
The other thing to watch with highway=track is making sure that it has access tags – in the UK cycle.travel won’t route on a track unless there’s bicycle=yes or similar.
Updates are generally once a month or so. The latest date is at https://cycle.travel/map/info (the date here is the basemap update; the routing is usually a day or two after).
Thanks Richard. I was wondering where the scale used in the OSM documentation came from. In general the mtb:scale tag seems to be pretty inconsistent and arguably often misused. A gravely green-lane can be marked as mtb:scale=3 while a downhill black run in a bike park won’t be tagged at all. This must have caused the C.T algorithm to send people down some ‘interesting’ routes in the past! OSM have recognised this; “Due to the subjective nature of the overall scale, this key has been criticized as lacking verifiability.” In the distant future when all this gets sorted out I look forward to the cycle.extreme-travel spin-off.
Hi Richard
Following on from my last question. Could you consider adding a way to allow routing down bridal paths or green-lanes with a mtb:scale=2 or above?
A good example of where this would be useful is the historic ‘gap’ byway between Fan y Big and Cribyn in the Brecon Beacons. The route is mostly mtb=0/1 with a couple of short sections of mtb=2/3. It’s straight forward on a gravel bike if you walk these short sections. Currently C.T will use a far more difficult ‘on-foot’ route along mountaintop foot-paths to avoid it.
A few options might be;
- Routes like this are mostly ignored in the same way as foot-paths. If a specific via point is used it brings up a warning to the user.
- A third option on the paths & roads > Paved slider to include something like ‘off-road’.
- A tick box option to allow users to choose to ignore the mtb:scale. Likely also with a disclaimer and warning.
- These routes become ‘on-foot’ sections and likely also with a disclaimer and warning banner.
Not sure I fancy pushing up Cribyn… it’s hard enough to walk up!
Route options aren’t really possible given the way cycle.travel’s routeplanner works – basically each option would require renting another routing server for £££ every month (see https://cycle.travel/advice/map/faq). At some point in the future I might look at a gravel/off-road option but it’s not a priority right now.
For now, probably the best idea would be tweaking the routing so that it’ll reluctantly go over (say) an mtb:scale=2. That would mean you could drag the route that way though cycle.travel wouldn’t choose it by default.
Ultimately though, I think much of the gap is mistagged – there’s a long part tagged as mtb:scale=4, which the OSM wiki describes as “Very steep and difficult, with sections having large boulders and roots. Frequent loose debris. Very steep sections with very tight hairpin turns and high steps that will cause the chainring to hit the ground. Some trials techniques will be necessary.” From my recollection, albeit walking rather than cycling, the gap really isn’t like that apart from that gulch down towards the southern end.
I think those mountain bike types think they are more hardcore than they actually are! :-)
I've re-graded the whole track now but if you can tweek the routing that would be excellent.