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See this journey: https://cycle.travel/map/journey/291677 - basically this is a shortcut to the NCN route and means you can climb a steep hill away from traffic - but cycle.travel doesn't want to route this way.
However, if you reverse the route then it uses the cycleway. Other OSM routers can use this cycleway, so not sure what the issue is?
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Comments
I think it’s because it’s not just a steep hill, but also tagged with a less-than-ideal smoothness tag; cycle.travel gives an extra penalty to steep climbs on rougher surfaces. Plus having a bollard at either end doesn’t help! It will route over it at a pinch, but requires a via tag or two to do so.
Thanks for the reply Richard. Unfortunately it seems impossible to route over it at all when going uphill - if you set a via point on the cycleway it will direct you into a loop doubling back on yourself just to go downhill on this section! See: https://cycle.travel/map/journey/292205
It's a bit strange as I can drag the route onto nearby footways where it'll tell me to dismount, but it doesn't tell me to do that here - would that not be better if it doesn't think going up this steep hill is a good idea?
And I think the smoothness tag is correct - no potholes but it's not been resurfaced for ages so some bumpy bits, the wiki says for a "city bike" so I would have expected cycle.travel to be ok with this. Especially as it's a traffic-free path and you're going be cycling slower up a steep hill so can avoid the "bad" bits? The bollards shouldn't be a problem either as they are tagged bicycle=yes (have a look on Street View).
It will do it but it takes some persuading: https://cycle.travel/map/journey/292375
Ultimately smoothness= is basically a bad, subjective tag – it’s not at all clear to what extent it interacts with surface= or other tags, and whatever the OSM wiki may say, people use it inconsistently around the world. I could in theory build in some logic to say “for paved cycleways in the UK, going up a steep hill, apply smoothness with the following weightings”, and I may have to, but doing that for every country and every type of surface gets a bit wearing!
The bollards aren’t blocking the route (as per above link) but they do impose a small time/convenience penalty.
Hmm, not that useful as when you drag the start/finish points slightly away from the cycleway it no longer routes over it :)
Thing is, I'm sure I remember trying this route before the bollard and smoothness tag were added and it had the same issue - would removing either of them just now be a good idea to test this out?