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Comment by ihaveajob | Hacker News Reader

I feel like nobody in the Google Maps uses a bike for commuting or other daily life purposes. If they did, they wouldn't route me through the most dangerous, fast traffic street in my neighborhood, and instead they would choose the adjacent bike boulevard. Apple Maps does this much better, even though they've sent me to the wrong side of town a few times.

From my early tests, Organic Maps also sends you down dangerous routes, so I'll use cautiously.

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The bike profile in OSM routers will prioritize bike paths, bike lanes, and small streets over big highways, but there's always a balance since you're unlikely to want to bike 10 miles out of your way to avoid a busy street. That balance is always in flux and can only ever be as good as the OSM data underlying it (road classification and bike tagging etc)

If you bookmark streets that it's sending you down or avoiding inaccurately and check them out later on a computer, I bet you'll find that there's some OSM tagging issue. https://osm.org has a routing tool you can compare with as well. The OM Telegram channel is always willing to take reports on where OM routes are worse than OSM.org routes, and OSM channels are happy to help figure out what tagging issues there may be.

Cheers!

The balance is problematic in every cycling directions app. Some may be a bit more comprehensive than others in certain areas but all of them prioritize shorter routes over flatter ones.

I wish there were a true flattest route app/website that prioritized quieter roads and more gentle slopes by default using existing terrain data instead of making users manually add a bunch of waypoints using their own knowledge in order to compare elevation profiles.

I know that OsmAnd has fairly granular routing preferences, including a "preferred terrain" setting with "hilly", "less hilly", and "flat" options (as well as a "use elevation data" option which I don't quite understand).

Magic Earth (proprietary app that uses OSM maps) allows you to choose the maximum hilliness you want your cycle route. I've never used cycle routing, so can't comment on how well it works.

I they they have designed a routing algorithm that works very well in cities where Google employees live and work, and they either haven't tested elsewhere or aren't willing to make targeted changes to fix specific areas. It does work very well in US cities that have Google offices, but it's not surprising to me that it would fail elsewhere.

I mean, you'd think that, but lately it constantly tries to send me down illegal lefts, and tries to have me drive on the Muni/Taxi only part of Market. In San Francisco. And if San Francisco isn't a coty where Google employees live and work, I don't know what is!

This seems local. I just checked routing from North Berkeley to Emeryville and Apple Maps routes me down the main north-south traffic sewer instead of good parallel bike routes, and Apple Maps appears unaware of the new bridge across the rail yard. Google's results are far more sensible.

Exactly this. I'm sent down Sacramento or San Pablo regularly, instead of the California or King st boulevards. Most people who ride around don't need the directions, but now and then you see someone you can tell is following them, not realizing there's a far safer option around the block.

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