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Comment by idreyn | Hacker News Reader

I think a variation of this comfort-optimized route planning tool would be really useful for cyclists as well. I've found that Google Maps favors streets with bike lanes when planning bike trips, but those are typically main thoroughfares where the bike lane is a last line of defense against aggressive drivers, delivery vehicles, and "dooring". Often these are paralleled by quieter streets where cars drive at careful speeds and a bike lane is not really necessary for safety.

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I think there are so many better routing apps for cyclists and walking but everybody defaults to Google Maps. Even people who ask me for advice on cycling routes sends me a Gmaps screenshot as if it's the only navigation app that exists.

Here are some examples I wrote down (I'm also an OSM mapper): https://jakecoppinger.blog/articles/the-best-apps-for-bicycl...

Assuming the future is already here with better navigation, how do we encourage people to use anything but Gmaps? Would love to hear any thoughts :)

You should give https://www.komoot.de/ a try. It has a well-designed UI, very good routing, voice navigation (crucial for biking imo) and includes one map region for free.

Thanks, will do!

Strava does something interesting here with their route planner. It's a bit finicky, but it gravitates toward public segments for either running or cycling. A segment on Strava is like a well-known running route or a chunk of a path, and when you upload an activity it finds which segments you went along so you can see how your results change over time, and what other people are doing. So it generally gives better (or at least safer) routes than Google Maps since it's based on what people actually do :)

Alas, it takes a lot of effort to actually build a route with the thing.

Ebikers naturally start taking routes that optimize for safety and enjoyment over avoiding hills. It would be cool for Strava or Goog Maps to detect ebikers (easy to tell from speed vs road grade) and weight their routes more heavily in deciding the best route to recommend.

Even better than just trying to detect it via ML, let it be a separate option to toggle.

Still need ML to build the menu of paths.

Sure, but

> to detect ebikers (easy to tell from speed vs road grade) and weight their routes more heavily in deciding the best route to recommend.

seems like an anti-pattern that screws over people who don't have e-bikes.

If users can tell us that they're using an e-bike and we give a separate option then both e-bikers and pedalers can have navigation options that work best for the specific use case, rather than shoehorning both into the same option.

We need to stop assuming things using ML and pretend like that's somehow more user-friendly than the user directly telling us what they want. (See: constant griping about how poorly non-verbatim Google search is getting)

Check out Komoot. Myself and many in the UK swear by it for bicycle route planning.

Huh, I often find the opposite. If there's a nice bike path from A to B in an arc, Google often prefers a shorter path straight through a residential area. Which means multiple turns one has to memorize and also slow down for.

"brouter-web" is an excellent online bike route planner, beyond the dozen profiles you can also edit a profile to your needs. For what you describe, the "safety" profile will avoid car traffic.

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