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Hi there,

Troubled times, indeed, but still able to plot routes and enjoy a cycle.

I have had this issue for a while, and can’t imagine it hasn’t been reported or highlighted …. but decided to do so, anyway.

I’m using Auto Plot, By Bike, Cycle Map. The route given will sometimes use brown dashed tracks (footpaths), sometimes even if a blue dashed line (cycle path) is available. It seems to ignore green dashed lines (bridleway) as expected.

I understand that this is somewhat complicated, but am I missing something, please? Is there an option to ignore footpaths when using “By Bike”?

Thanks!

Stay safe and healthy,

Mark

Sorry Mark, we don’t have an option to ignore footpaths when auto-plotting By Bike.  We do have a request on our Feature Requests list (number 90) to add a “road bike only” setting, so we will hopefully look at adding this at some point if it is feasible. 

OK, thanks, understood. There is the "Road Bikeable" in BETA form but I don't think that influences the automatic routing choices, of course.

I would suggest that "road bike only" may be a hard thing to define, ie what surface is really suitable. But surely an option to ignore footpaths would be simpler to implement?!

Regards,

Mark

Sadly not Mark - it's not a simple thing to implement. We can only work within the limitations of the routing engines we use.

Ah, such was my hope of innocence! Thanks for the clarification.

I haven't tested it fully, but does "By Road" ignore all footpaths, cycle paths, bridleways etc?

Thanks,

Mark

Hi again,

As my new question is somewhat related, I thought I'd carry on in this "Route Plotting" topic.

Do you have any information that better explains the routing used with the map types, please? I have noted that with Auto Plot set to Bike, the plotted route varies markedly depending on Map Type. Not unexpcted ...... except it seems that Google Street Map predominantly chooses cycle paths, NCN routes etc, while Cycle Map seems to stick with main roads!

Today I plotted a route across Milton Keynes, a town with more cycle paths you can shake a stick at. By mistake, I had left the map on Google Street Map. When I changed it back to my default Cycle Map, the difference was very marked, much less bike friendly.

Tonight I experiemnt with MK to York, one click, take me there. Google chose a longer NCN dominated route, Cycle Maps took me a shorter route along a lot of busy A roads.

Just interested, and thought I'd share that observation.

Regards,

Mark

Sorry Mark we don't have any further details on this. Both Google and the OpenStreetMap rouiting we use try to favour roads and paths suitable for bikes, but they will have different criteria for this that is probably subject to change.

See https://www.plotaroute.com/posts/2824/D/1