⏱️ 04:06 total (1:45 actual) ⇄28.5km ⌀16.1km/h ↗89m ↘?m
Good ride yesterday, to deliver some seedlings I have been growing to a friend who lives under the Fiumicino take-off flight path, just across from the excellent cycle path. It was hot, but not too hot, the going mostly flat, the wind blustery at times, but manageable, and I managed to take in the world’s best roadside food. All good. Naturally I have a complaint.
I didn’t really need turn-by-turn navigation to get from Parco Leonardo station to my friend’s house, but I asked OsmAnd to route me anyway, mostly to get a sense of how long it would take so I could give them an ETA but also to route me safely through a built-up area. I left it on, to get me from the station to the cycleway that I know exists. For a while, the cycle path parallels the main road, which is what OsmAnd wanted me to take, and although I disobeyed and joined the cycle path, OsmAnd was content to believe I was following instructions. At a certain point, however, my position had obviously deviated enough for Navigation to panic and keep recalculating the route, leaving the cycle path at impossible places to get to the main road.
This was annoying enough to abandon navigation and use my local knowledge. But it made me a bit cross. Having every speed camera announced made me crosser. The app knows I am on a bicycle. I feel it ought to prioritise cycle paths whenever possible. In fact, if there were a setting, I would ask it to detour via cycle paths provided that did not extend the journey time by more than, say, 10%.
The same thing happened when, after delivering the plants and a bit of rest and rehydration, I set off for the roadside food and a train home, a determination to make me stay on the original route despite my having strayed to a path.
In the past, I have used brouter.de to plot a route and then sent that to my phone. That works well, but is not very flexible when you are actually out there riding. What I really want is a bicycle routing app that knows where the cycle paths and minor, unpaved roads are and always favours them where it can. I tried Organic Maps too, and like OsmAnd, it wanted me to take the busy main road, not the adjacent cycle path.
