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U-turns

27 Feb 2022
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Hi Richard, is there a way to improve how it handles U turns?  If you have a waypoint on a road/path and then add the next one in the opposite direction it behaves as if you were a car and routes you in the direction you were heading until you find a road to turn round on whereas of course on a bike its easy to u turn.  Came across when just wanted to head to a viewpoint but then wanted to head back in the opposite direction.  

In the picture below, the route came in from the south, selected a waypoint pretty much where the 7 marker is (top of Hackpen Hill) and then wanted to head back down the road so added another waypoint but it wants to route me all the way down to Broad Hinton and back up the hill again.

Thanks

Dave

Comments

Sun 27 Feb 2022, 21:41

Not sure what the "official" response will be, however this is fairly easy to manage. Add an extra waypoint, then route directly from one to the other. Here's how I did it. I'll leave it in my space for a few days. https://cycle.travel/map/journey/290714

Sun 27 Feb 2022, 22:03

Cheers Graham - I get that so thanks for the input.  I was more intruigued by what looks like surprising routing.  Luckily its not a common occurrence!

Sun 27 Feb 2022, 22:07

That works! What you can also do is set a waypoint as an overnight stop (click the waypoint, then “Overnight stop”) though obviously that’s not ideal if you’re actually trying to plan a multi-day route.

It’s not so much deliberately acting as a car, more that defaulting to U-turns makes it harder to drag a route to something genuinely different. So it’ll need to be something I add as an option. It’s on the list (admittedly quite a long list!)…

Sun 27 Feb 2022, 22:19

I’d leave it a long way down the list.  As I said, not exactly a common occurrence.  I’d rather have the app!

Thu 31 Mar 2022, 00:04

I have had the same problem relatively regularly and I cannot seem to overcome it with the use of additional waypoints, as suggested by Graham, as his suggested solution turns at a junction, rather than being a true u-turn at a specific point.  An example is:  https://cycle.travel/map/journey/298801 - Waypoint 5 should be a u-turn (it's the entrance to an historic site), but the automatic routing inexplicably goes all the way down the hill towards the water, to some random point, before turning around and heading back past the u-turn point to the next waypoint.  The problem is sometimes mitigated if there happens to be a short side road or lay-by close by that the routing can use to turn around, but that then means an inaccurate GPX to load to my Garmin.

Using an overnight stop waypoint does fix the u-turn problem, but this resets the km counter and isn't practical, as you suggest, for multi-day routes (although I guess it would would work as a stop-gap measure for single day routes where the site is being used to plot a route for GPX purposes and need only show the route).

Thu 31 Mar 2022, 10:14

298801 doesn't seem to exist. If it does, I can't load it.

Thu 31 Mar 2022, 19:38

Sorry Graham - I hadn't made it public. 

Fri 1 Apr 2022, 23:28

https://cycle.travel/map/journey/299450

I opened your route, went to waypoint 5, clicked it and selected route direct to 6. If you can't do that, I can only imagine it's a "setting" somewhere.

Sat 2 Apr 2022, 18:45

Thanks Graham - it was a user lack of knowledge issue.  I didn't know of / understand the 'direct to' functionality available from the waypoint box - or how it worked. But now that you've drawn my attention to it, I've played with it a bit and I think I now have the hang of it.  Thanks.

Sat 2 Apr 2022, 20:15

You can also now set U-turns at via points!

Add your via point as normal, then click it to open up the popup bubble, and you'll see a little ‘…’ at the bottom right – that’s where the advanced options live. One of these is now ‘permit U-turn’. Clicking that will allow the route to U-turn at that point.