Originally Posted by
Tourist in MSN
I was in Nova Scotia, the local road on the paper map was straight to my destination. Standing on the ground, it looked like it had nice quality pavement with wide shoulders. My Garmin told me to take a different route with a combination of national and provincial highways that was twice the distance as the local road. I could not figure out why it did not pick the local road, checked automotive routing, cycle touring routing, and road cycle routing, all were the same. I rode my bike on the local road, it was the right choice. This was using my Garmin 64.
This sounds like a map issue.
Originally Posted by
Tourist in MSN
Different device and location:
Last summer my Garmin Nuvi was telling me to drive hundreds of miles out of my way, the gravel road that I was driving on was direct to my destination. I think I had about 25 or 30 more miles to drive down this gravel road. The county paper map told me that the gravel road was the right way to go. The Nuvi had the Garmin automotive road basemap from the Garmin Express program.
Sounds like a map issue.
It's possible that the gravel road was indicated on the map as something not drivable. It's possible it wasn't on the map at all.
GPS devices have also routed people in cars along ways that required fairly heavy duty 4x4 (where they got stuck and died even).
These sorts of issues are going to be more likely in remoter areas.
Originally Posted by
Tourist in MSN
I had my Garmin 62S in my vehicle, since I had about a half hour of nothing to do but drive to my destination, I pulled out the 62S and checked it too. It also told me using Automobile Routing to drive hundreds of miles out of my way. But the 62S in Tour Cycle routing took me to my destination by following the gravel road I was on. I do not recall which base map I had enabled in the 62S, but I am quite sure it was one of the Open Street maps. But not sure if it was a topo map or automotive map, since I have both options in the 62S.
Sounds like a map issue.
Garmin uses the term "base map" for map with very little detail that cannot be used for routing. So, your use of "base map" is confusing.
Originally Posted by
Tourist in MSN
So, if you think there is a good reason that both Garmin devices in automotive routing was telling me to drive hundreds of miles out of my way, mostly on paved roads instead of roughly 30 miles on gravel, I would like to know why.
Sounds like a map issue.
It seems
very likely that the gravel road was not classified on the map as drivable.
I'm a regular contributor to OSM. So, these sorts of issues are routine for me.
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Years ago, someone in the UK described "long way" routing for cycling. I determined the issue was that the expected route used roundabouts that were classified as "highways" (roads that are assumed not to allow bicycling unless it's explicitly allowed). The fix for this was updating the roundabouts in OSM to allow cycling.