[Doctor_Fegg]

> A few years ago, following Google maps cycling directions me and a couple of friends on road bikes were led through muddy forest trails, old rail road tracks and green lanes on a London -> Paris <24hr attempt (we took 26hrs).

Yep. It's clear that Google Maps optimises for city riding and that's cool, but it does fall down badly on longer tours. To a large degree this is inevitable - only OSM actually has the level of surface quality information required for this sort of planning.

With my site, cycle.travel, I've taken the opposite tack: generating quiet, safe routes for leisure and touring rides, while still being as fast to generate routes as Google Maps. Sure, I want it to be usable in cities but it's not the main focus.

People have used it successfully to plan month-long tours across Europe and the US. One of my favourite bits of feedback was https://www.cyclechat.net/threads/swindon-to-orkney-a-wet-we... , where someone just punched in a start and end point at opposite ends of the UK, and rode the route it suggested without any tweaking.

https://cycle.travel/map if you want to play - always happy to hear suggestions/feedback (and thanks to Jake for including it in the post!). Currently Europe/North America/Australia/NZ only.

[close04]

> Yep. It's clear that Google Maps optimises for city riding and that's cool

I believe that even in the city it simply maps a path as suitable for cycling and that's the limit of the optimization. It then becomes a "shortest/fastest trip" calculation. They don't mark roads and paths for specific types of cycling and you're not asked to provide such info. So whether it's asphalt, cobblestone, or a dirt road even in the city it will make no difference as long as it's suitable for some bikes. Found out the hard way a couple of times...

[overlordalex]

This looks really great! I'm going on a cycling tour next week so I can directly compare this to my google maps route.

At first glance your site shows the local "cycle highways" which is really cool. However I accidentally clicked on the map twice while scrolling around, and then couldn't figure out how to clear the route so I had to reload the page.

On closer inspection I noticed a button called "close route" which seemed to do what I wanted, but I'm not sure if it has other side effects

[koyote]

I plugged in some routes I am familiar with here (Sydney) and it did a great job at picking the roads/paths I would personally choose!

I do agree with 'overlordalex' on the 'Close Route' button. I couldn't find it at first and 'close' seems like a weird verb to use for 'clearing' the current route. Unless I am misunderstanding what the button is supposed to do. I would personally have a 'Clear' button somewhere close to the 'Get route' buttons (but then again I am no UI/UX expert :)).

[neves]

Nice. When I'm on vacation I always want a leisure rote, with the best views, not the fastest as the GPS usually gives me. Hope someone makes one of these for cars.

[bombela]

I will definitely try your site. The map view is great!

Can I get the distances in km instead of mile?