[mkgmap-dev] Utilizing route=bicycle relations in long-distance routing

Mon Oct 7 21:49:19 BST 2013

As we all know, bicycle routing is hard. Unlike motor vehicle traffic, 
where there is a clear hiearchy of roads, the bicycle road network 
consists of all sorts of roads.

In my area, there are no clear 'bicycle trunk roads' or 'bicycle 
motorways' that could be used as the backbone of a longer journey. I 
guess that the situation could be better in more bicycle-friendly 
countries, such as Denmark or the Netherlands.

I was thinking that maybe we could tweak the bicycle routing by 
increasing the weight or speed of ways that belong to a route=bicycle 
relation, or by defining 'wormholes' between some points of the 
relation. I guess that this is not doable in the default style, which 
aims to be 'neutral' for all modes of transport, but I guess it could 
make a huge difference in a bicycle-oriented map.

FWIW, I just defined a 25km route relation that could be useful for 
testing: http://www.openstreetmap.org/browse/relation/3252216
IMO, this is much better than the NCN 4 in this area.

Has anyone experimented with this kind of tweaks to routing? Would this 
bypass the limitation that the Garmin Edge 705 seems to ignore cycleways 
for the middle section of a route?

	Marko