Originally Posted by
Tourist in MSN
I think GPS units use a government hierarchy in choosing roads. On my Canadian Maritimes tour, I was not following established bike routes, pretty much deciding where I wanted to go and going there. There were a few times that my GPS wanted me to do about 30km, bypassing a direct local road with good pavement that was half the distance. My phone mapping app agreed with my GPS. But my paper map was very clear, the local road looked best. But it was not a national highway or state highway, it was just a local road. I took the local road, saved me maybe an hour and the pavement was quite smooth.
I think it’s more a “Google” hierarchy than a governmental one. In other words, the routing is dependent on the application that the GPS unit uses for its base maps and the algorithm that is used for determining “bicycle friendly” vs a vehicle route. Ride with GPS and Google Maps are well known for taking us cyclists on flights of fancy. My personal favorite was when Google Maps wanted to put me on a ridge line above the Delaware River when a perfectly nice “federal road” hugged the river bank. I could go ride up and down a hundred hills or just follow the water.
There were a couple of other times on that tour where my GPS kept trying to put me on busier roads that had a greater distance. Somehow in the route choosing process it sometimes got it wrong. But it never tried to put me on a local road where a state or national highway was better, it appeared to avoid the local roads.
I suspect that you have a setting wrong in the software. Car mode vs bicycle mode, perhaps?
When I am out there and if I did not like a pre-planned route that I made at home, I still use the GPS first, but I always look at the paper map to see if that really makes sense. I am planning a tour for early summer, there is about 100 miles (150km) that is on roads, not a common bike route. There was nothing on Ride With GPS suggesting any routing. So I just picked out local roads that did not look too busy on Google maps and tried to create a GPS route to follow later. And if it does not look right when I am standing on the ground with a paper map in hand, I will do what makes sense at that moment.
I don’t bother with paper any more. Nor do I really “plan” a route other than having a general idea of where I’m going. I plan on a day to day basis based on where I’m staying for that particular night. The on-line maps are good enough to see what I roads are alternatives if I need one.
I actually have kind of the opposite problem with Ride With GPS as it keeps trying to send me off on to bike routes that are inappropriate. Had that problem in Michigan two years ago. The Ride With GPS kept wanting me to off onto the deeply sandy Trout Lake/St Ignace Trail in the UP. Three quarters of a mile of that was enough to make me follow the adjacent roadway.