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Show HN: Bike route planner that follows almost only official bike trails

trailimap.com

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Re: Show HN: Bike route planner that follows almost only official bike trails

#101

Post by allg12 »

cullenking wrote: post #69

Nice work! I run ridewithgps.com and am responsible for all our mapping and routing. If you ever want to pick my brain about anything related to bike software, and of course grapphopper / vector tiles, feel free to reach out, email is in my profile. I'm actually about to dive into fixing up some custom graphhopper routing profiles today for some new route planner updates we are about to release!

Oh wow, that's amazing - thank you! I really appreciate your offer and I love RWGPS. I just read your comment about about all the hardware you're using at RWGPS and it's clear you're operating on a completely different scale than I am :D Right now, I'm just running Graphhopper on a €40/month Hetzner server and free tiers on Vercel and Maptiler. Though I already hit the free-tier limits for Maptiler so I'm quickly setting up a Martin server to server Europe mbtiles on some cheap server instead. Once the traffic drops after this HN post I think a low-cost server should do the trick for now.

As for Graphhopper, I ran into some challenges during the Europe-wide import stage. It turns out 64GB of RAM wasn’t enough, so I ended up spinning up a 128GB instance on AWS. After tweaking some config settings and following the deployment guide, I finally got it working. I also had to change the source code a bit to link each "official bike route" edge to its corresponding OSM relation info but I managed to get it working in the end(using KVStorage and KValues).

For now, my planner is pretty basic, so I don’t want to bombard you with beginner-level questions. But if something more complex comes up down the road, I’ll definitely take you up on your offer to reach out. Thanks again—I really appreciate your help and generosity!

Re: Show HN: Bike route planner that follows almost only official bike trails

#102

Post by [deleted] »

cullenking wrote: post #69

Nice work! I run ridewithgps.com and am responsible for all our mapping and routing. If you ever want to pick my brain about anything related to bike software, and of course grapphopper / vector tiles, feel free to reach out, email is in my profile. I'm actually about to dive into fixing up some custom graphhopper routing profiles today for some new route planner updates we are about to release!

[deleted]

Re: Show HN: Bike route planner that follows almost only official bike trails

#104

Post by benjiweber »

This does a much better job than anything I've seen before. Nice work. It still doesn't generate routes I'd use as they're too circuitous due to the poor cycle infrastructure in the UK. However, it does a good job of highlighting good options and options I didn't even know about.

Re: Show HN: Bike route planner that follows almost only official bike trails

#105

Post by acaloiar »

cullenking wrote: post #87
somic wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I frequently use RWGPS for planning my bike rides but don't pay for it (yet!). Curious - is all routing done by graphhopper or do you have some secret sauce on your end? Also graphhopper web has regular bike mode and "racing bike", they tend to come up with different routes, wondering if it's incorporated on your side somehow or if there is a way to influence RWGPS algorithm to be more "road cycling" vs casual cyclin…

We have an update to our web and mobile route planners coming out in the next month that adds more specific bike profiles, including paved/unpaved preferences and cycling infrastructure preferences. Maybe an MTB profile as well. We use graphhopper for everything, with customized profiles. We add data to the weekly planet PBF files from the OSM project for additional routing data not present in OSM.

MTB would be most welcome :)

Re: Show HN: Bike route planner that follows almost only official bike trails

#106

Post by hgomersall »

allg12 wrote: post #14

Sorry, forgot to mention. The planner is a mess on mobile I totally forgot to make it mobile friendly as I didn't think anyone would want to plan their trip on a phone.

Fwiw, mapping is the thing I genuinely value smart phones for (vs dumb phones). I've been recently looking at uploading the gpx traces to my new Garmin watch, but creating the traces is still not perfect. OSMAnd does a reasonable job, but it's a bit circuitous to get the trace uploaded.

Re: Show HN: Bike route planner that follows almost only official bike trails

#107

Post by 0_____0 »

asdff wrote: post #71
wintermutestwin wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>a) Most people are mobile first I couldn't imagine trying to build a complex route on a tiny screen with a crappy phone UI. I am starting to feel like an old man yelling at clouds here. Why in the hell wouldn't you prefer to use a nice monitor with a mouse for a complex task like this?

Because you might plan a route while already out on your bike

I just did this today! I got routed up a cow path and had to shoo cows out of my way as I hiked my bike up a canyon.

Re: Show HN: Bike route planner that follows almost only official bike trails

#108

Post by david-gpu »

wintermutestwin wrote: post #56
verelo wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Interesting assumption. My mind goes to to a) Most people are mobile first and b) In this category of app, i imagine people want the route with them on their phone as they bike (as they're probably unfamiliar with the route, hence the need to plan it) Cool idea, i'd love to try it but honestly i'd love it on my phone for the aforementioned reasons! --- Edit: Some follow up remarks (From Chrome on a Mac) 1. I found it…

>a) Most people are mobile first I couldn't imagine trying to build a complex route on a tiny screen with a crappy phone UI. I am starting to feel like an old man yelling at clouds here. Why in the hell wouldn't you prefer to use a nice monitor with a mouse for a complex task like this?

> I couldn't imagine trying to build a complex route on a tiny screen with a crappy phone UI.

I nearly always plan routes on my phone. After all, it's the device I use for navigation attached to the stem of my bike.

> Why in the hell wouldn't you prefer to use a nice monitor with a mouse for a complex task like this?

The task isn't very complex with a decent UI. See for example the open-source app OSMAnd (Android & iPhone). Also, I am rarely at my desk, but I always have my phone on me. There can also be the issue of "Neat, I made a route on a big screen; now, how do I get it on my phone for real-time navigation?" depending on the app you are using.

Re: Show HN: Bike route planner that follows almost only official bike trails

#109

Post by insane_dreamer »

Moru wrote: post #94
insane_dreamer wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Except that if you're a serious cyclist, spending $10/month on a really good road mapping service is worth more to you than spending $10/month on a music streaming service (or 2 coffees at Starbucks).

Don't compare RWGPS to Starbucks please... The coffee isn't really worth that kind of money. But $10 is a lot in different parts of the world. For me that is more than what I pay for my mobile internet connection that works out in the nowhere.

> But $10 is a lot in different parts of the world

of course; this is primarily a US audience (maybe parts of Europe)

Re: Show HN: Bike route planner that follows almost only official bike trails

#110

Post by rconti »

greener_grass wrote: post #35

A great concept, but there's one big problem: many official bike trails are crap. Sometimes it's actually better to take the road, or you end up on a windy route that's near impossible to follow, debris everywhere, no right of way, etc. I would like to try this with a "prefer offroad" option.

There are numerous options available for that; Strava, RideWithGPS, Google Maps, etc. I think the point of this project is to create something _new_ and different.
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