Does Avoid Unpaved Roads work?

[Barry Evans]

Does the Avoid Unpaved Road check option (Settings/Navigation/Bicycle) work? I have encountered lots and lots of cases where it does not and am beginning to wonder if it works at all? Checked or unchecked I get the same route, even 100 km routes with 10s of options and clear paved/unpaved choices.

 

Thanks

[Martin Gregor]

Did you check OSM maps if they are tagged as Unpaved?
Martin

[Patrick Dailey]

It's very difficult to tell whether a road is paved or not from within the OSMP editor, otherwise someone would probably offer to fix that portion of the map for you. Instead the project really relies on local volunteers to help with such details. Changing a road's tag from "unset" to "dirt" is one of the easiest tasks in the project, and it's a great way to get started if you'd like to help out. Please consider volunteering some of your time to the Open Street Map Project at  http://www.openstreetmap.org .

On Friday, October 25, 2013 10:52:47 AM UTC-4, Barry Evans wrote:

[C G]

As it doesn't work, I use the car mode whem I'm biking in the countryside...
It would be useful that this option allow us to avoid any track/path (like in the car mode, isn't it ?), whether it is tagged unpaved or not.

[Maarten Deen]

Does OSMAnd specifically only excludes ways that have surface=unpaved (and certain others)? I assumed that highway=track and highway=path indicated unpaved as default.
If not, it would mean a lot of extra tags.

[Max]

There are many tools to analyze OSM data.

surface:
http://mijndev.openstreetmap.nl/~ligfietser/fiets/index.html?map=surface&zoom=13&lat=52.6922&lon=9.98573&layers=B00000FFFFFFFFFFFFTTTTTFF

http://www.itoworld.com/map/25

Regards,
Max

[Max]

highway=track + tracktype=grade1 is paved (by definition), but I'm not sure, if OsmAnd considers this for "avoid unpaved" option.
tracktype=grade2,grade3,grade4 and grade5 are unpaved (by definition), but OsmAnd does not consider this for "avoid unpaved" option, if I'm not wrong.

Here is OsmAnd unpaved list:
https://github.com/osmandapp/OsmAnd-resources/blob/master/routing/routing.xml#L345

Regards,
Max

[Maarten Deen]

If I read it correct then track is included in the avoid_unpaved strategy, irrespective of tracktype:

                <!-- very bad roads -->
                <road tag="highway" value="track" speed="15" priority="0.3" >
                        <specialization input="short_way" priority="0.7" speed="45"  />
                        <specialization input="avoid_unpaved" speed="0"/>
                </road>

But I am missing the avoid_unpaved strategy in highway=path.

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[C G]

It seems to me that what you show, Maarten, is for car routing, but not for bicycle.

[Maarten Deen]

Good of you to point that out. But I didn't show that, Max pointed to that section. I don't really know enough of the routing.xml file to realise that there was a separate car and bicycle section. Now you pointed it out, it is logical.

So that means that for bicycle, there is no avoidance of tracks, only of roads specifically tagged with surface=unpaved.

That seems odd to me. Why assume that a track is unpaved for car routing, but not for bicycle routing?

And it still remains that highway=path is never excluded from routing if you want to avoid unpaved roads. And a path is (IMHO) a lesser road than a track and unpaved by default.

On Tue, Nov 5, 2013 at 8:56 PM, C G <coprog...@gmail.com> wrote:

It seems to me that what you show, Maarten, is for car routing, but not for bicycle.

--

[Barry Evans]

Thanks for all replies. For a end user like myself, I mostly assume that something so basic just works as you would expect it to.

I mostly use OSMAnd+ for navigation away from home, so when it erroneously leads me to a unpaved road (with the 'avoid unpaved road' checked ON), I just curse and and find an alternative.

BUT what I have found is that in BIKE mode, as Maarten suggests, it tries to lead me to me to what are clearly (single track) Footpaths. Thats why I am so suprised! They're not even dual-track unsurfaced.

Hopefully then, that should be a very quick fix?

 

[C G]

More surprising : it seems that bicycle routing always avoids tracks with tag tracktype=grade4 or grade5 (surface=soil/sand/grass, lack of hard material) :
https://github.com/osmandapp/OsmAnd-resources/blob/master/routing/routing.xml#L470
(why is the value for grade4 lower than the one for grade5 ?)

I think it's not a good choice, because it doesn't satisfy any the two kinds of cyclists :

- people with a moutain bike (or an old bike) don't really care about cycling on tracks "grade4/5". So value could be higher (0.8 ?)

- people with a road bicycle (or a city bike) often want to avoid unpaved ways, unless there isn't really any other possibility.

About footways: a problem is that they are not always forbidden to bicycles (if it is, it should be tagged). Maybe their value could be lower (0.6 instead of 0.9 ?)
About paths: a problem is that "These routes may have any type of surface" Wiki. So they could be paved... For me, they are in most cases unpaved, so it'd be logical to avoid them in the avoid_unpaved strategy (although I read somewhere that in Germany cycleways are often tagged with highway=path; could someone confirm that ?).

So, what about this ?

                <way attribute="priority">
                        <select value="0.1" t="highway" v="track">
                                <if param="avoid_unpaved"/>
                        </select>
                        <select value="0.1" t="highway" v="path">
                                <if param="avoid_unpaved"/>
                        </select>
                        <select value="0.8" t="tracktype" v="grade4"/>
                        <select value="0.8" t="tracktype" v="grade5"/>
                        <select value="1" t="highway" v="track"/>
                        <select value="1" t="highway" v="path"/>
                        <select value="0.6" t="highway" v="footway"/>

[Peter B]

Have a look on OpenRouteSerive.org which is OSM based.
For bicycle you can choose:
- shortest way
- mountain bike
- racing bike
- safest way
- preferred cycleway-route
Excellent idea !
OpenRouteSerive.org is a project of university of Heidelberg, Germany. I suppose they would provide assistance.
Peter