New route-planner!

[Richard Fairhurst]

You don't at present - but is that something people would be interested in? It shouldn't be too hard to add.

[andyoxon]

I like the clarity of the relief/contours on the map.  Km/Mls choice would be good.

[Ningishzidda]

IIRC, on BikeHike you can change the routing algoriths ( Google or OSM ) and the vehicle type ( Walk, cycle or car ) mid way through extending the journey.

I have looked at dozens of on-line route planners. I create a route with them and then ask my TT to generate a route in Bicycle mode.
To my astonishment and delight, the TT uses the roads a 'confident cyclist' would use.
The on-line route planners when adjusted to Bicycle, creates a route that a 'nervous cyclist' would use.
Garmin, when adjusted to Bicycle, creates routes similar to the online route planners.

I have found the correct kit for me.

[Nelson Longflap]

Ooooh - it looks even better on my large(r) screen.  Getting a large scale view of the route can also be achieved by clicking the points of interest on the turn by turn narrative running down the left hand side of the screen, with the map re-centring itself at a large scale as you click each turn. I'm not sure if other tools do this, but it is an ace feature for quickly homing in on bits of a route you want to view in detail.

I'd like km too please because it will match the normal setting on my bike computer; it will be useful when reading/preparing audax routes; and I have a good feeling for what km mean in terms of bicycle effort.

[Nelson Longflap]

PS well google maps does the linking of turn by turn narrative to the map, but not with the change of scale we see here. 

A missing feature is disambiguation of place names.  I asked for a route to Clanfield, and it picked the one in Oxfordshire, which wasn't the one I meant. [Edit: Sorry - that feature is supported very well. ]

[Richard Fairhurst]

Ok, I've added a user preference for 'use kilometres'. If you log in and go to your user profile page, and click the box, you can now choose between miles and km. The index lists are still shown in miles throughout but I'll change that shortly.

(Re: placenames - it gets me every time I go to the BBC Weather site and search for 'Worcester'. The four responses are, in this order: Worcester, Republic of South Africa; Worcester, United States of America; Worcester, Worcestershire; Worcester Park, Greater London. Seriously, BBC, you're a British broadcaster and you know my home location is OX7... which one do you think I might want?)

[Somnolent]

Another "nice to have" would be the facility to export the cue sheet as a csv/xls.
Much as I love maps, printing a PDF and carrying on the ride doesn't really work for me, whereas a GPS (primary) and Audax style routesheet (back-up) is the charm.

Also an "undo last" button ?

[PH]

Fast and simple, I like it Even at work on a really slow computer it was working fine.  I tried a couple of DIY Audax routes I use and it didn't need much to get the route I'd choose.  I can see it being my planner of choice.

[Wowbagger]

First impressions are that it is very good. Will play around a lot more. It has shown me an off-raod bit I didn't know was there - right in the middle of Essex, which I thought I knew very well!

[Nelson Longflap]

Another "nice to have" would be the facility to export the cue sheet as a csv/xls.
Much as I love maps, printing a PDF and carrying on the ride doesn't really work for me, whereas a GPS (primary) and Audax style routesheet (back-up) is the charm.

Also an "undo last" button ?

Exporting the turn by turn narrative in an editable form might be useful ... if you're going to edit it. Although I'm not sure if I would without editing the map as well - in which case I'd get another cue sheet made by the system. It would be nice if the cue sheet could be included as a separate page on the pdf export as well as the map, or it could be exported separately as a spreadsheet as ppPete suggests.

And +1 to "undo" as well.

I like maps too and don't navigate by GPS (although I use a logger to record rides). On a recent ride when I didn't bother packing maps, I printed a google maps view of the ride "just in case". When the inevitable off-course excursion happened the scrappy printout was good enough to enable me to re-route. As the pdf featured here is a more convenient way to do the same thing I would definitely use it as a backup to a route sheet instead of carrying a lovely heavy map(s).

[Ningishzidda]

I asked for a route to work.
The planner's suggestion was 10% longer with 12% more climbing.

[Feanor]

I asked for a route to work.
The planner's suggestion was 10% longer with 12% more climbing.

Sounds like a win to me.

[MikeFromLFE]

I make a 'regular' journey between Leicester & Northampton where I generally use NCN6 (Brampton Valley Way) - the planner has suggested an alternative that is never considered before, and makes perfect sense.

[Somnolent]

I'm having an "issue" today.
Trying to put together a circular route (but without using the circular route facility - because I'll want to do a bit of dragging things around after).    All goes well until I get 3/4 of the way round, then I'll add a point and it will "route" to it from the start point not from where I'd got to previously.

Not helpful ! 

[Euan Uzami]

Quite impressive although it does seem to suffer from the age old phenomenon that all route planners designed with cycling in mind suffer from of "thou shalt not cycle on an A-road". Quick test on a route for me and it prefers a route which is apparently NCN but which is unsurfaced and muddy across fields, rather than a perfectly good A-road.

Is it actually algorithmically any different from openrouteservice or is it just a front end to openrouteservice with
additional niceties?

[Vince]

It looks good, but can it be expanded to include Holland?

[Ningishzidda]

I asked for a route to work.
The planner's suggestion was 10% longer with 12% more climbing.

Sounds like a win to me.

Four hours later, there are 22% less lamp posts ,,, 

[andrew_s]

IE8 at work gives the following when asked for the elevation profile

Webpage error details

User Agent: Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 8.0; Windows NT 5.1; Trident/4.0; .NET CLR 1.1.4322; .NET CLR 2.0.50727; .NET CLR 3.0.4506.2152; .NET CLR 3.5.30729; .NET4.0C; .NET4.0E)
Timestamp: Tue, 3 Dec 2013 14:37:26 UTC


Message: Canvas is not available. If you're using IE with a fall-back such as Excanvas, then there's either a mistake in your conditional include, or the page has no DOCTYPE and is rendering in Quirks Mode.
Line: 28
Char: 239
Code: 0
URI: http://cycle.travel/scripts/flot/jquery.flot.min.js?1377765400

[andrew_s]

Trying to put together a circular route (but without using the circular route facility - because I'll want to do a bit of dragging things around after).    All goes well until I get 3/4 of the way round, then I'll add a point and it will "route" to it from the start point not from where I'd got to previously.

I mentioned that earlier.
It seems that a new point is added to either the start or the end of the route according to which is closest. You'll have to add the new point close to the current end, then drag it to where you want it to be.

[Richard Fairhurst]

Lots of great ideas - thanks all!

Re: adding to the start rather than the end of the route - I'll look into giving it some sort of weighting towards the last point added.

A turn sheet is something I've wondered about adding to the end of the PDF. There's a slight technical complication (I won't bore you with the details) but it shouldn't be impossible. Will take a look.

@andrew_s: thanks for spotting - looks like Flot (the charting library) needs extra support for IE8. Shouldn't be hard to fix.

@Ben: definitely not ORS - I don't think ORS is fast enough to do draggable routes. I'm running a heavily customised instance of OSRM with cycle routes, elevation, surfaces and a bunch of other stuff added on.

Out of interest, what's the NCN/A-road location in question? I can at least check that the route is marked as mud in the OpenStreetMap source data, though it may not change anything.

@Wunja: one day! But it's UK-only for now, I'm afraid - not least because some of the data (the OS OpenData) is UK-specific.

[Euan Uzami]

@Ben: definitely not ORS - I don't think ORS is fast enough to do draggable routes. I'm running a heavily customised instance of OSRM with cycle routes, elevation, surfaces and a bunch of other stuff added on.

Out of interest, what's the NCN/A-road location in question? I can at least check that the route is marked as mud in the OpenStreetMap source data, though it may not change anything.

http://cycle.travel/map/journey/140
the bit between where it leaves the A1133 and where it joins holme lane is pretty much unsurfaced as far as I know.
as is the bit of NCN647 on here http://cycle.travel/map/journey/141

However i consider the A-road acceptable to cycle on.

Although it would be impossible for you to maintain the list of what people consider mud and what A-roads people consider acceptable to cycle on.
What I would really like is the ability to give feedback - i.e. mark this road as acceptable, and from then on it would route via it. Mark this muddy path as UNacceptable, and it woiuld not route via it.
Would that require recompilation of the OSRM data?
If so that probably eliminates doing it on the fly, but you could do it as a nightly scheduled task. Save user feedback throughout the day, and each night, if there's been any, then recompile the data.
What server are you running it on if you don't mind me asking... i did once have a look into osrm myself but it seemed to require a linux/unix server.

[Bianchi Boy]

I have been using velomaps recently http://www.velomap.org/ and find that it goes onto paths and unpaved roads quite a lot.

Is there a map that when you route stays on tarmac? None of the free maps I have tried do off road sections. Even when you use car ad shorter time. Is this just map errors?

BB

[Somnolent]

Ben T's GPX Editor (which uses Google routing) doesn't stray off-road if you set it in car mode (or at least I've not found it to do so).

[Euan Uzami]

Ben T's GPX Editor (which uses Google routing) doesn't stray off-road if you set it in car mode (or at least I've not found it to do so).

 it hasn't got user editable routing though yet

[freeflow]

Just a general comment.  I use chrome as my browser and as my eyes are getting a bit tired these days I have the font size set to large.  This means that large portions of your web site don't fit the boxes in which they print.  Not sure if this is chrome or your website.