November 8, 2023
Bikes are tools for freedom. They’re tools for whizzing down hills, pedaling alongside waterways, and spinning along in serenity. Except, there’s often a busy road with a fast speed limit, gnarly traffic jams, or parked cars on both sides of the street. Sometimes, the mighty bike can be thwarted by its environment.
Whether you’re cycling in the city, town, or countryside though, there are ways to look at the route planner and adjust it to fit your needs as a rider. Here are a few tips for thinking like a cyclist when planning a route.
The komoot route planner will mostly do the hard part for you. It’s well aware that cycling among a string of cars up Pothole Road is inferior to the longer but infinitely more pleasant cycle path nearby. So, when you put in your start and end point (and add a couple of waypoints if you’re doing a loop), then it’ll already suggest a cycling-friendly route. There might be more you can do though, so now’s the time to zoom in and get customizing.
When you zoom into the route planner, you’ll spot green lines. These are cycleways – designated paths or lanes for cyclists (and often pedestrians, too). They may stretch for a long time or be short; linking roads, cutting off busy roundabouts, or joining residential streets to each other. If you spot them on the map when your route has chosen roads, you can drag the route line to these green lines. The route will likely be more circuitous, but it will almost certainly have significantly less traffic.
You can also walk momentarily to skip roads that aren’t so cyclist-friendly. While it’s not always ideal, simply hopping off your bike and pushing it along a footpath for a short distance can be the answer to your worries. When you start adding the odd footpath into your cycle route planning strategy, what once looked like a dangerous ride through the city can suddenly become a wonderful, peaceful one. As long as you’re just pushing and not riding your bike on footpaths, using these short links can transform your experience.
Bonus tip: Is the route planner not letting you take footpaths when planning a cycling route? Just untick ‘follow ways’ on the waypoint card for that section.
Roads in more rural areas can take on a mind of their own. Even off the major car routes, countryside roads could be winding lanes with bizarrely high speed limits, muddy potholed roads, or perfectly peaceful routes that epitomize the cyclist’s dreams. How can you tell?
While the size and designation of roads is shown on the route planner, it’s often best to dig a little deeper – that means using the fantastic tools of Trail View and Highlights.
In komoot’s route planner on the web (not mobile), ensure you have the Trail View map layer selected to see the feature’s green dots peppered about the planner. Each green dot is a photograph of that exact spot, giving cyclists an invaluable window into what that stretch of road is like. You can usually see road quality and other factors such as width and whether there are high hedges or open views.
Highlights can also offer insight into road suitability, with images and user-generated tips. These are points on the map that others recommend and could be views, attractions, or notable segments like fun zig-zag climbs or particularly spectacular cycling.
The key to planning a great ride is to remember that the lines on the map are representations of what’s on the ground*. When you combine the mapped roads with Trail View, Highlights, and designated cycle paths, you have a surefire way to plan and enjoy fantastic bike rides that take you on great cycling roads.
*Visit the map help guide for a refresh on using the komoot map.
This article on how komoot’s routing algorithm works may also be useful for planning your next ride.