Does cycle routing profile take into account that 'Footpaths' are not ridable?

Hi guys,

A user from my app which uses your API asked this -

In the UK we have certain laws regarding legal access ie. we are allowed to ride a ‘Bridleway’ but we are not allowed to cycle on ‘Footpaths’, for example. Does your app incorporate the legality of trails?

I couldn’t find a way to test and ensure this so can someone please shed some light on this aspect?

Thank you :slight_smile:

Hey @abhiank, I didn’t fully look into it, but that behavior is a known limitation and smth that needs to be fixed on GHs side, see

Apparently they’re sorta on it. But could take a while until an upcoming change to that is reflected in our fork of GH.

Hey @nils,

Thanks for the reply.

Just to reiterate, whether to consider bridleways or not needs to have a per country and per routing profile logic (Esp for foot and bike profiles) which has not yet been integrated into ORS yet right?

Apparently they’re sorta on it. But could take a while until an upcoming change to that is reflected in our fork of GH.

Ah cool. Didn’t know you guys pulled from the GH repo. How often is that done?

Not sure what it needs exactly. But it’s definitely not integrated in ORS. And (if you follow the links to the GH issue(s) in the ORS issues above) apparently not even in GH.

apparently not even in GH.

Yeah. Just saw that. So even GH is not using bridleway for walking and biking right now.

But coming back to my original question, atleast footpaths are not being used for biking right? How can I check that?

Our wiki offers some explanation:

The code is here, but can’t tell you much more about it:
https://github.com/GIScience/openrouteservice/blob/master/openrouteservice/src/main/java/org/heigit/ors/routing/graphhopper/extensions/flagencoders/bike/CommonBikeFlagEncoder.java

Oh cool. Thanks @nils, will do through the wiki and this file.