Hi ,
First I want to say a huge thanks to you Richard and all the Cycle Travel team. You guys have really changed the game for me. I've been using the platform since 2016, starting with short rides to some serious stuff like the BikingMan over 1,000km challenges!
I'm hitting the road in different parts of the world now. Next up is Race Around Rwanda, and I've already tackled Thailand last year. Got plans for Morocco, Taiwan, and a few other spots in Asia and Africa for 2024. Any chance you're expanding your coverage to these areas?
Thanks a bunch!
Frédéric from Belgium
Comments
Two posts down :-)
https://cycle.travel/forum/thread/5667
And of interest from https://cycle.travel/advice/map/faq
https://www.patreon.com/join/cycle_travel
Great post Hobbes!
Just as a footnote, I would really like to add areas of South-East and East Asia. It’s a big cycle touring destination and fits well with cycle.travel’s focus on scenic, picturesque routes.
The challenge (as in the thread linked by Hobbes) is basically resources. Doing the routing takes up a lot of server space – Europe excluding UK/Ireland is over 50GB of RAM right now, for example – and the elevation data is particularly demanding. cycle.travel uses a really clever technique (not invented by me I hasten to add!) to reduce the space taken up by elevation data but it’s still pretty big.
But never say never. Feedback on areas you’d like to see is really useful so I can plan where the next expansion will be, even if it’s not immediate.
Anecdotally, I would have really appreciated c.t recently in Taiwan, where much of the official “cycle route 1” is along busy roads, and there are much nicer alternatives. (Fortunately I was forewarned.)
However, I can appreciate the challenges in adding new regions with variable OSM reliability & traffic data. (And other challenges of which I have no clue)