Normal Bike is absolutely fantastic for someone like me riding 35mm gravel tires, as it creates itineraries with an excellent mix of residential areas, dirtroads with small gravel but not too big stones (most of the time), and faster roads.
The only problem is the huge tendency to leave a road to take a parallel street with less trafic for just 100 meters and then back on the road. It’s extremely frustrating when going down at a good speed.
If you see the case coming up because your map is zoomed out enough, no problem, but most of the time you don’t see the line coming back to the road 100 meters further and you stop for nothing, climb some very steep residential road for 10 meters, ride 100 meters and then come back to the road where you could have stayed and enjoyed your 50km/h decent.
This https://drive.google.com/file/d/1wKeEjqLahhwmJhaKSv0_Z7WTAd22rHbE/view?usp=sharing is a very interesting .gpx where it happened way too much.
kilometer 24.58: unnecessary detour to a residential neighborhood
kilometer 42.29: unnecessary tiny detour to this neighborhood
kilometer 43.34: 5 meters detour to a house entrance 46°38’08.7"N 6°48’47.7"E (see photo below).
kilometer 46.40: left a very enjoyable two lane road to go down and up for a total of about 300 meters
kilometer 47.18: wanted me to go down to a house and back for a total distance of about 30 meters.
There is something in the algorithm that makes the calculator literally allergic to certain roads. For example road 151 (Route de Moudon) in an area like this 46°38’08.7"N 6°48’47.7"E
There should be smth in the algorithm that roughly says: if itinerary direction is in downhill at this place AND road incline is equal or superior to 5% AND this incline is similar for a couple of hundreds meters before and after this point, stay on this road even if it has some trafic and there’s a quieter road nearby.
Hope that helps.
Thanks for the excellent work.
