
Apps for Bicycle Directions - jakecopp
https://jakecoppinger.blog/articles/the-best-apps-for-bicycle-directions-2020/
======
BattyMilk
For the most part, city riding is pretty well served by Google maps IMO.

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).

The difficulty with cycling directions is that there's not a 1 size fits all
solution, a roadie needs smooth road but would prefer it quiet and scenic, a
mountain biker would rather those trails we found and a commuter/hybrid would
be fine on those in short bursts but probably prefer the speeds of the roads.

If I'm doing something of an "epic" route these days I'll spend a bit of time
trying to find a suitable GPX that I can sync to my watch for directions -
usually that'll come from Movescount, OS maps, Garmin or just someone's blog
of a route. For most other things, Google maps works fine.

~~~
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...](https://www.cyclechat.net/threads/swindon-to-orkney-a-wet-week-in-
october-2019.254492/) , 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](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.

~~~
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

------
johnnybaptist
I cycle daily in NYC and have used both Citymapper and Google Maps

Google Maps' cycling instructions route me onto streets with bicycle lanes. I
haven't had any problems with it and I think it's a fine option. Maybe because
NYC is the type of location google has excellent data on.

Citymapper is also good. The fastest vs quietest distinction doesn't often
yield much of a change in route. What I like about citymapper is you can
distinguish between riding a personal bike, or riding a bike rental. Sometimes
when bringing a friend along, they rent a citibike, and it's nice to have the
option for directions to take you to a docking station close to the
destination.

~~~
cguess
I've used Google Maps in London, Berlin, Washington DC, Chicago, New York, SF,
Austin, and a few other places. Berlin and DC were probably the worst, but it
still worked. New York (where I live now) it sometimes chooses the "wrong"
bike path. For instance, it'll choose a non-protected lane and insist on it
even though there's a protected, 2-way bike lane a block over that's much much
faster and safer.

Then again, this is a really really hard problem to solve for, and Google
probably has it the best no matter where I am, so that's what my default is.
I'm excited to see how Apple's will work in iOS 14 though.

------
ben7799
A Garmin Edge model with built in OSM (8xx/1xxx models) are absolutely
phenomenal at this with no mucking around with apps or any cell service
required.

I think it's what almost all very serious cyclists use.

I've done 150 mile turn by turn routes on my Garmin. I've had various models
for near 20 years of cycling. The only time ironically they ever have trouble
is if you download a route generated by one of the various apps on the
internet.. you need to be quite careful with those. The on the fly routes they
generate don't ever have those issues.

When they started using the Garmin curated version of OSM it was a massive
upgrade. Near me it's very near 100% coverage even of mountain bike
singletrack trails through the woods. OSM has gotten incredibly good for
cyclists. If you are not a road cyclist OSM has amazing coverage of bike lanes
& paved paths too.

And you can actually see it in the sun and don't need to carry a pocketful of
USB powerbanks to make it to your destination. The only people who need to
recharge with a powerbank are the .01% who ride more than 150-200 miles
without stopping at a place to charge.

------
Fwirt
I don't cycle, but my preferred mapping app is Locus Map.

[https://www.locusmap.eu/](https://www.locusmap.eu/)

It's packed with features, the track recording is solid, you can use a couple
different online track providers or install brouter for offline routing, and
the list of map tile providers is impressive. It seems to be targeted at
Europe, but the US maps are excellent too. You can use OSM as a base layer
(online, or pay ~$1 per state for their pre-rendered OSM tiles for use
offline), or you can use the USGS national topo map tiles. You can also import
your own.

We went on a trip to Micronesia a few years back and I used it to mark POIs
and record our boat trips around the islands to show our friends when we got
home. There were no available maps of the area in the app, but I was able to
find some high-resolution scanned images of USGS topo maps for the islands we
visited and was able to import them into the app as an offline base layer.
Worked great.

~~~
jakecopp
Thanks for the recommendation, I'll look into it and add it to the table!

------
fredley
[Disclosure: Citymapper employee]

We’ve been working on improving walking, cycling and scooting recently, so
it’s good to hear people are finding it useful! We recently added turn-by-turn
and voice instructions (in early access as part of Citymapper Club) and we’re
going to be continuing to make improvements over the coming months. Want to
help out? Get in touch.

~~~
jakecopp
Sent you an email.

------
jakecopp
I wrote this blog post as I'm often asked for a safe cycle route somewhere -
hopefully you find this useful :D

~~~
sriacha
Thanks for the post. I'm a big osmand user, but have never tried BRouter. Is
it significantly better than the built in routing?

~~~
usrusr
Brouter is great, despite some minor annoyances that are ultimately rooted in
the design decision that the OSM graph representation does not contain street
names (a lot of bike routing happens in nameless trails). Locusmaps on android
has the best routing front-end (it can use brouter or some others) I have seen
so far, including a variety of desktop front-ends.

------
SmellTheGlove
Since moving to SF, I've _really_ wanted to take the plunge and start biking
to work (COVID notwithstanding). I haven't done it yet, though, because I'm
not super confident on routes that prefer protected lanes and minimize hills.

This post was super helpful. Citymapper wasn't even on my radar, but now I
want to go grab a bike rental and give it a shot.

~~~
secondstring
You'll find out after biking around for a week or two where the main corridors
with minimal elevation are, especially along the main route you take. At this
point after ~3 years I know 95% of the best routes to get to/from any within
the city proper, and I check directions just for the ending last few blocks
since that can make the difference between a steeeeeeep climb or a simple
circle around 2 more blocks that's flat.

I also don't have any problem with respect to no bike lanes and crowded
streets though, so that might be a bit more difficult to discover. I use
Google Maps and it's pretty solid at taking you an extra .25 miles or so just
to get you on a dedicated bike lane within the city, and you can always
streetview points on your route if you want to double check what it looks
like.

~~~
SmellTheGlove
Yeah, I need to just give it a try I think. Problem is, I drive in this city
(or did), and with the crap I see people do behind the wheel I wonder how
cyclists survive.

What app do you generally use for directions that might tell you about
elevation?

------
yunusabd
I recently used openrouteservice [1] for a trip from Bremen to Berlin (~400km)
and it worked pretty well. It even lets you choose between different types of
bikes (road, MTB). I downloaded the GPX into OsmAnd on my phone for turn-by-
turn directions. OsmAnd also does a decent job of guiding you back onto your
predefined route.

One thing that was a bit irritating was the directions at intersections, where
you clearly had to go straight, but it told me to turn right and then
immediately turn left. This happened when the bike path took a slight turn
before the intersection, e.g. to guide you towards pedestrian traffic lights.
Not sure which one of the two apps is to blame here.

Oh and when I tried Google Maps for a bit, to find my accommodation, it
immediately tried to guide me through the middle of a field, with no
discernible path whatsoever. So much for that..

[1] [https://maps.openrouteservice.org](https://maps.openrouteservice.org)

~~~
lmm
> One thing that was a bit irritating was the directions at intersections,
> where you clearly had to go straight, but it told me to turn right and then
> immediately turn left. This happened when the bike path took a slight turn
> before the intersection, e.g. to guide you towards pedestrian traffic
> lights. Not sure which one of the two apps is to blame here.

It's your workflow that's to blame: using a GPX erases that information. If
you'd planned the route in OSMAnd it would have been able to give you more
road-layout-aware navigation.

~~~
yunusabd
I see, I'll play around with it a little more then. The thing is that the
OSMAnd route looked way worse, and from using it on shorter routes
occasionally I didn't really trust it.

~~~
lmm
Yeah, OSMAnd's built-in routing isn't great. But anything based around
exporting a GPX from one app and using it in another is going to have the
problem you describe; the only way to avoid it is to find an all-in-one app
that's good enough on all fronts (or possibly use a fancier format like TCX).

~~~
yunusabd
TCX sounds cool, and apparently it's going to be supported in the next release
of openrouteservice [1]. Looking forward to that, since the route itself was
pretty solid.

[1] [https://github.com/GIScience/openrouteservice-
app/pull/323](https://github.com/GIScience/openrouteservice-app/pull/323)

------
Drup
In france, and in particular in Paris,
[https://www.geovelo.fr/](https://www.geovelo.fr/) is very very good. It knows
about various Parisian specialties (going the wrong way on residential street
is allowed, temporary bike paths, mixed pedestrian/bike paths, etc) that other
apps don't really understand. It also gives multiple paths depending on
various criterion.

OsmAnd is also decent. Google map is terribly bad.

~~~
gregoriol
Geovelo is indeed very practical in Paris! Well made and provides choice
between "secure" and "fast" journeys, it also show how many % of the proposed
paths are protected bike lanes and has shared information on hazards on the
road!

------
kemayo
Soon to be also-available is bicycling directions in Apple Maps:
[https://www.macrumors.com/how-to/cycling-directions-apple-
ma...](https://www.macrumors.com/how-to/cycling-directions-apple-maps/)

(But not everywhere yet. I'm in the midwest, and the beta just says cycling
directions aren't available in my area.)

~~~
acwan93
Same here in Los Angeles. I think only the Bay Area is available during the
beta, and then the other cities will rollout in the fall when iOS 14 GMs.

------
Naac
It would be nice if in addition to free, it mentioned whether or not the app
was FOSS.

When I was searching a couple of years ago, there were no open source bike
tracking android apps, and most of the "free" ones were trialware that popped
up a subscription screen as soon as you tried to do anything complicated.

Also, I love the use of the <table> tag in this article.

~~~
Mediterraneo10
Even two years ago, OSMAnd and Brouter were open source and available from the
F-Droid repository.

~~~
Naac
Cool! I'll take a look at those. Back when I was looking, I was searching for
something more bike specific.

------
hondo77
I use the bike route given by Google Maps as a starting point. Then I get into
Street View so I can really see where I'll be riding. Is there a bike lane?
How wide is the shoulder? What's the condition of the road? I like riding on
roads with bike lanes or wide shoulders (where I don't care if cars are flying
by me), if possible. Some of the popular routes in my area are on roads with
tiny to no shoulders and 55mph speed limits. Sorry, not interested. I have yet
to find any mapping site/app that finds a route that I am always happy with.
They all need tweaking. I just find that Google Maps gives a good starting
point and has the tools to let me come up with a route that I'm happy with.

~~~
jakecopp
OSM already has all this data tagged! Have a look at the granularity of the
data:

[https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Bicycle](https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Bicycle)

Cycle apps using OpenStreetMap will try to find the safest routes. If using
Citymapper you can explicitly choose between faster or safer (slower) routes.
OSMAnd let's you choose particular types of lane.

------
blueski
Any suggestions for ebike-friendly bike directions? Less need to route around
hills and more accurate journey time estimates would be useful.

~~~
jakecopp
In OsmAnd you can adjust how much you want to take hills into account I
believe :)

------
quicklime
I know the company has had some difficulties as of late, but I’ve found Strava
to be quite effective for route planning. Mostly because it can route you
according to “popularity”, so it’ll put you on roads that other Strava users
regularly ride on.

This is great for a lot of cases, although sometimes it’ll pick a road that’s
great for road biking on the weekend but not so great for commuting on
weekdays.

I wonder if Strava could create two heat maps based on what I imagine are the
two big clusters on their user base: road bikes and casual commuter cyclists.

~~~
kielfish30
> I wonder if Strava could create two heat maps based on what I imagine are
> the two big clusters on their user base: road bikes and casual commuter
> cyclists.

I want this really badly. Around me (North Germany) the cycling infrastructure
is great for the casual commuter, but the quality of paths for road bikes
varies dramatically - some bike paths are beautifully smooth and wide, whilst
others are bumpy/gravelly and too narrow for safely overtaking slower riders.
Distinguishing between them using Strava heatmaps or other mapping tools seems
impossible until I actually go out and ride them. Alternatively, an app where
I could simply mark myself the roads I have ridden and a quality indicator
would be useful (maybe this exists?).

~~~
jakecopp
In OSM you can add tags of the bike path surface, see below:

[https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Bicycle](https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Bicycle)
[https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Key:surface](https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Key:surface)

OsmAnd will show you the surface types along a route as you're planning, and
you can adjust which surfaces you'd like to cycle on!

------
seaerkin
Any app that the majority of cyclists are using will win this battle. It's
easy to map known bike trails, what's difficult is mapping a good road to bike
on. There's so many factors that go into this, but the best and easiest way to
get this data seems to be tracking what roads most cyclists are riding. This
is exactly why strava heat map is the best for route planning IMHO. You can
travel to any area and look at the heatmap surrounding you and instantly have
an idea of what roads are heavy cycled.

~~~
Mediterraneo10
Strava is often unideal for touring, because its recommended routes are where
all the local sports cyclists are forced to go due to their thin little tires
and lust for speed. Tourers might have thicker tires and so be comfortabke
with less smooth roads if it means avoiding cars.

~~~
seaerkin
That is a good point. I have seen Strava prefer a higher traffic road near me
and I then manually adjust that portion. It would be cool if Strava could
provide some sort of "Avoid vehicle traffic" preference when route building.

------
762236
I plan with Strava using it's popularity heat map (I road 9000 miles in 2019).
I then cycle using my Garmin 520 bike computer, which is painful to use for
directions, but up to the abuse particularly on single track, and I try to use
memory based on previewing with street view and satellite photos while
planning. I often have to backtrack, typically uphill. But most of the time
I'm repeating rides, at which point I'm going off memory.

~~~
falkd
For those who aren't strong and fearless cyclists, Strava can be helpful, but
be careful and double-check those routes. I've seen some pretty dangerous
segments that I have been very scared on, and they show up red-hot on Strava.
Why? Probably because some die-hards go that way a lot, or go that way in a
group. And those are probably the types of people that use Strava more than
the casual commuter.

In my city there's a 5 lane bridge, shoulder just wide enough for drains, and
nothing but a 3-ft concrete barrier 60 or 70 feet above the river. The speed
limit is 45, but people drive like that's a mild suggestion. This is a very
hot cycle route on Strava for some reason, but I think it's frightening.

~~~
762236
Totally. I just had a route that was intense blue in the heat map on the start
of the road, and then faded to low-intensity as the road progressed. It turned
out that the road switched from pavement to something that was a cross between
double and single track, while crossing a mountain. Many cyclists turn back,
but quite a few continue. I'd like to see how many go in the reverse direction
too.

------
hokkos
I have an eMTB and OSMAnd is handy to find trails, classified with difficulty
level (when you click on it), and ability to choose to route you to avoid
asphalt routes, I just have to find how to add a stylesheet to show colors
based on difficulty, and set up BRouter to route only on MTB trails.

[https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Key:mtb:scale](https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Key:mtb:scale)

[https://osmand.net/features/navigation-
profiles](https://osmand.net/features/navigation-profiles)

[http://brouter.de/brouter-web](http://brouter.de/brouter-web)

------
nikita
I’ve been looking for a good app like this for a while. When commuting in a
new area or going on ride such as [https://rootsrated.com/san-francisco-
ca/cycling/paradise-loo...](https://rootsrated.com/san-francisco-
ca/cycling/paradise-loop-cycling) it’s great to have turn by turn direction
which gets on your bike computer and ALSO on your watch. I’m looking forward
to apple maps, however I doubt it would be supporting bike loop routes such as
paradise loop.

------
altacc
For those that don't want step by step navigation but instead use serendipity
to wayfind through a city, I can recommend beeline
[https://beeline.co/pages/beeline-velo](https://beeline.co/pages/beeline-velo)

It's a simple arrow that points towards your destination, leaving you to work
out the route as you cycle. Not the quickest way to get you there but I enjoy
the discovery aspect of it.

~~~
mantesso
It's a really interesting and elegant solution but 112€ for what looks like a
very simple device sounds a bit expensive to me. Does anyone know of a similar
system but for the Apple watch?

------
BrandoElFollito
As a regular contributor to OpenStreetMap, I did not realize how poor the bike
lanes mapping was around me (surroundings of Versailles, France). There's a
lot to fix :)

~~~
hokkos
Also, a lot of the new corona-piste are not added, and somes have very
complicated pattern of you having to move to a center double new-cycle lane,
sometime taken on the old opposite car lane direction, sometimes on your
direction, it is very confusing.

------
osdiab
Unfortunately I haven’t found any good cycling mapping apps for Tokyo. Most
apps try to take you down tiny streets but here those can be pretty dangerous
and slow - lots of blind corners and super complicated routes. Best I’ve found
is NAVITIME’s 自転車 app but honestly it’s pretty crappy. I end up just
eyeballing medium-sized streets on Google Maps and navigate myself; really
wish there was something better for here!

------
cf
I'm curious is there something like OSM but for directions using public
transit? Some public repository of bus and train times.

~~~
davito88
General Transit Feed Specification is a format for public transit agencies to
publish this information. There are a few repositories like
[https://transitfeeds.com](https://transitfeeds.com).

~~~
cf
This looks really cool! I gotta figure out a way to contribute to this. Is
this what OsmAnd uses to pull in transit information?

------
MrScruff
In the uk, I use cycle streets.

[https://m.cyclestreets.net/](https://m.cyclestreets.net/)

------
TimesOldRoman
Google Maps in Oakland took me straight up Fruitvale headed east....which, if
you've ever biked it, is a disaster. Yes, it's a "bike lane", but it's shared
with cars and suuuuper busy.

Google should be smart enough to know that there is co-mingled car/bike
traffic and safely route my bike away from the cars.

------
throw7
Citymapper is a limited amount of cities. What do "real" cyclists use? I get
the feeling they use a garmin-like gps devices made for cycling?

In the past, I've tried to plan a route in google maps (for just driving), but
once you import and try to use it, it recalculates your route.

~~~
putnambr
I know you probably mean road cyclists, but I haven't seen Trailforks
mentioned. Nothing beats it for singletrack route planning.

Komoot is good too, but at least in my area of NA the elevation calculation is
off by quite a bit. When I've used it for longer routes, I've ended up putting
in at least 1,000 ft more of climbing than it has told me would be on the
route. Trailforks doesn't have that problem.

If you have a local IMBA chapter, most of them have accurate trail profiles as
well.

For road cycling routes, I use Strava. If you want detailed routes that are
popular with local cycling clubs, Trek stores usually have surprisingly good
handouts on local routes.

~~~
ar_turnbull
I've liked Komoot quite a bit for planning longer road bike loops in or near
the city — surprised it hasn't taken off more but I suppose it's a pretty
niche market. Integrates wirelessly with Wahoo bike computers (suck it Garmin
haha) and is free for your local region too.

~~~
ako
Agree, komoot is what I also use for planning. Shows all the different
terrains, elevation, for different sports (mtb, road cycling, hiking).

I don’t ever use komoot for recording though, phone uses too much battery.
Recording is done through a polar watch, synced to strava. Watch is also best
for wind and kitesurfing, no need to bring a big expensive watch on the water.

------
kohlerm
FYI komoot switched to vector maps a while ago. I generally like it for
routing(MTB mostly) but lately they switched to a new (monthly) pricing model
for some features I would like to have (difficulty). :-(

------
Someone
For those with devices that handle Garmin maps, there’s
[http://www.openfietsmap.nl/](http://www.openfietsmap.nl/), a free routable
cycling map for Garmin GPS units.

------
ape4
Every app I have tried is inadequate. Sometimes the best route is going the
wrong way on a quite residential street - of course apps don't condone this.
Google Maps lets you plan the route on your larger desktop screen then send to
phone - nice feature - but then its planning is weird - even when I ask for a
bike route and turn on the bike layer it doesn't follow it. It needs options
to let you go bike paths vs distance - for me bike paths is more important.

~~~
usrusr
Brouter is designed to even allow sections where you need to walk your bike
(e.g. a pedestrian-only underpass with stairs) if they provide a significant
shortcut to the ridable route.

But please don't ride against traffic flow just because you think that rules
only apply to cars, that can be very dangerous to other cyclists who go in the
right direction.

