They absolutely should chime in on topics with which they have direct experience; but if they've never used some technology (whether a GPS cycling computer, tubeless tires, whatever), they should probably read and learn more than they opine.

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.

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.



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.

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.

I am a retired geological engineer, I worked with maps every day of my professional career. I bought my first Garmin 24 years ago and have owned a half dozen generations of handheld Garmins since then.

I was not serious when I asked if you were making fun of my phone.



I had to ask the phone company to enable pulse dialing, they had it disabled. It is used on a fiber optic VOIP system.

Now if only I could get caller ID to work on it, ... ...

I recall an article many years ago in The NY Times about a guy who worked for NavTech, or whomever the company is that Garmin hires to make the maps and routing. This guy would drive around metro areas like Boston and NY and develop what “he” thought was the best routes in these areas. He also was tasked to check on construction, etc., Botton line is you are at the mercy of somebody who thinks you should go a certain way, or at the mercy of what is now AI to generate routes. Often times they are wrong, though when Google Maps tells me to go a way I think is j correct, especially on long highway trips, I look carefully at where I think I want to go and often find big construction zones, accidents, etc….. Google is often correct. Garmin I have zero faith in, cycling or in a car,

I cant imagine how old that article must have, so long ago even the premise is ridiculous today. Modern routing algorithms are incredibly complex and reliable. They collect all ride data uploaded on their platform and utilize that information for predictive routing and that alone is transformative. They also aggregate other mapping data uploaded from various sources including bicycle route maps, OSM data and various Government sources.

I just spent 10 weeks on an unstructured bicycle tour around Europe. All my routes were built with RideWithGPS and on the Garmin Edge when needed on the fly. It had worked out extremely well much better than any alternative. There is been numerous occasions when needing to adjust my route to the various obstructions and roadwork the heat map feature clearly showed the alternative routes individuals were using. I have traveled many parts of the world and have only used a smart phone or tablet and a Garmin.

When highlighting the occasions that the digital routing platform was flawed is laughable when compared to the number of situation's which would occur if relying on paper maps which would be orders of magnitude worse.

Hmmm, well, if it still works, maybe I should try and find one......

I would use the Strava app exclusively if it connected to a power meter.

it’s pretty incredible how accurate google maps’ vehicular predictions are given complex changing traffic patterns. i find if you drive conservatively, they’re often within a minute or two even over multi-hour drives in complex, congested environments. if you drive very aggressively you can typically beat them by a few percent.

i exclusively use my phone on bike rides short or long, but i rarely ever use mapping or automated routing. i like using ridewithGPS to plan a route based on my experiences, photos, ride reports etc, but only if it’s really complex and unfamiliar will i load it up for the ride. i guess my rides just don’t have enough variety. i wonder if i’d use routing on a tour through unfamiliar territory.

it’s very strange that they removed this feature - 6 years ago now, it looks like. partnership deals, maybe.

This sounds like a map issue.

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.
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.

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.

===================

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.

Sounds like BS. Without being able to read it ourselves, no one can tell if you are recalling it correctly. It's hearsay.

Routing doesn't depend on "guys driving around" now (or possibly ever).

??? The data for "big construction zones,,accidents, etc" are hard to get (the routing might not be considering them). The routing is rarely "wrong" (going to some other place or an overly long way around) but it might not be the "best" (especially, if you have local knowledge).

Automated routing for cycling is very hard to do. People have wide differences in opinions about what roads are "good" for cycling. Some cyclists want to avoid cycleways and others strongly prefer them. There are also issues of elevation and grade that cars don't care at all about.

Automated routing tends to favor the shortest/fastest route. Often, cyclists don't want that.

So, planning your routes is going to be a good idea for a long while.

I've used automated routing on a tour (it's a useful tool).

It could be that your experience with the Roam is not typical (maybe the one you have is defective). If the Wahoos weren't generally "reliable", no one would be buying them (they seem fairly popular).

This seems like a great way to ignore the likely many, many more people who don't find them buggy.

That is, LLMs (It's not "AI") are likely only going to find text from people with problems to regurgitate to you.

I guess you want to able to record rides? For recording rides, all of the Garmins I've used have been reliable. The Garmins overall don't have a problem with this. Given that GPS is a weak radio signal, there can be issues with it being accurate but even that's getting better. I'd expect the Wahoo devices to be as reliable generally too.

Probably, most of the people here are using Garmins (or Wahoos) and find them "reliable".

12 days later we find out you want to use a power meter.

If a 40-year-old bike computer is what you are looking for, what is this thread about? There are countless featureless bike computers available, both used and new. This model evokes fond memories and offers great value at $15.00. No batteries or electronics are required, and they are fully serviceable by anyone with a good mechanical aptitude.

Long time ago, I'm sure the methods have changed. But this was how they did it back then.

NY Times, July 9, 2006

SATELLITE navigation systems have largely delivered all they promised when the technology first took to the highway: that drivers would always know where they were.

The trouble is, there are times when simply knowing your position on the planet is not enough. A G.P.S. unit is of little help in guiding you to a chosen destination when the route it calculates is outdated, if it instructs you to take an exit that has been closed or if it tells you to turn onto a road that has been converted into a pedestrian mall.

Technically speaking, you are not lost, but it's still a frustrating case of "can't get there from here."

To cope with this situation, digital mapping companies are rushing to keep up with road construction projects and new subdivisions popping up in what were cornfields only yesterday. Their goal is to assure that the digital maps used by navigation systems, stored on a DVD, hard disc or memory card, do not lag too far behind the reality.
The task is huge. On any given day at Navteq, the nation's largest digital map company, as many as 550 field analysts in 131 offices around the world may be on the road charting street grids. One recent bright and breezy afternoon in the far reaches of Queens, two of the company's analysts were navigating their white Ford Escape around quiet streets in the Rockaway Peninsula.

"I think you can delete what's in front of us because that doesn't exist anymore," Chris Arcari, a Navteq geographic analyst told his colleague, Shovie Singh, who was serving as the map plotter on this excursion.

Mr. Arcari was referring to the scene ahead, where a street that once ran through a new condominium development had been torn up and barricaded with "road closed" signs. The last time he and Mr. Singh were mapping the neighborhood -- just a couple of months ago -- the road went all the way through.

That's how quickly maps can become obsolete.

Using a graphics tablet -- a computer input device used to mark up the map by drawing with a pen instead of clicking a mouse -- Mr. Singh made a series of yellow X's over the closed road, which was displayed on a computer monitor on the dashboard.

The analysts record every little change they find. A stretch of West 66th Street on the Upper West Side of Manahattan, which has been renamed Peter Jennings Way to honor the late television anchorman, is now listed under both names on their maps. A series of crosstown streets in Midtown that were recently designated as "through" streets -- no left or right turns off the streets are allowed during peak traffic hours -- are now all marked as such so navigation systems will not instruct drivers to make turns.
The mapping system aboard the Ford Escape is relatively simple. It consists of a G.P.S. receiver with a roof-mounted antenna; an electronic input tablet; and a laptop computer that transfers raw geographic data accumulated on the drive to a monitor between the driver and the plotter, as Navteq calls the analyst in the passenger-side seat. There is also a video camera used to make a visual record of the trips.

The electronics record the vehicle's exact path, as determined by the G.P.S. unit. The data that the analysts see is much less refined than the maps that end up in a vehicle's navigation system. To the untrained eye, it is an undecipherable jumble of cartography symbols and color-coded lines.

Red lines represent major arteries, light blue lines are closed roads, blobs of blue mark non-navigable areas like marshes or fields, and so on. The equipment can code 150 attributes for any given road, noting details from how many lanes there are to whether the stretch of pavement is part of an underpass.

When there are holes in the map data -- missing addresses, a road that was not indicated or a landmark with no name -- the geographic analysts have to do a little detective work.

For instance, a short road on the Rockaway Peninsula -- it dead-ends into a canal -- has been unnamed on Navteq maps for some time now. Mr. Arcari pulled the Escape to the side of the road, got out and inspected a mailbox to see if the street name was there. No luck. In such a case, he will consult New York City records and use whatever name appears there for the street.
Map technicians spend a lot of time trying to match city and county records across the country with the actual roads. They verify and reverify, making trips into the field several times a week so their data will be reliable for car companies, makers of accessory and hand-held G.P.S. units and Internet map providers like Google and Yahoo.

Navteq updates its database continuously, releasing new versions several times a year so its customers are not selling maps that are long out of date. But as long as G.P.S. units depend on digital maps stored onboard -- the satellite's signal provides information only to determine a position, not the street grid itself -- they are always going to have some holes because road networks are constantly evolving.

And with navigation systems becoming more and more sophisticated, offering features like the locations of A.T.M.'s or Italian restaurants nearby, it is a never-ending undertaking to keep data current.

"You see changes all the time," Mr. Arcari said. "There are new turn restrictions, street directionality, speed limits."

Navteq, based in Chicago, and Tele Atlas, a competitor with headquarters in Belgium, gather all this information and create the databases for companies that sell navigation systems and services. While Tele Atlas relies more on existing data sources and less on fieldwork to update its records, the companies' methods of making a digital map have similarities. The raw information -- geographic coordinates of latitude and longitude -- is stored with other essential details as a data file called a vector map.
Once field analysts are done charting streets and points of interest and the information has been added to the map file, the data can be sold to companies like Garmin, Magellan and auto industry suppliers, which then convert the map data into a form that can be displayed on vehicle navigation system screen. Technicians at the G.P.S. companies encode the maps into a format appropriate for their systems, writing the software that controls functional features like the soothing electronic voices that announce directions.

For consumers, keeping a navigation system up to date requires purchasing a new digital map. Automakers typically issue annual updates for their systems; most recent models require a new map DVD at $200 and up. (One for a Cadillac Escalade or a Jeep Grand Cherokee is $199, while the latest Lexus update is about $350.)

Owners should check with their dealers for special replacement programs. General Motors, for example, is offering owners of 2006 models free update discs after the first and second years.

Maps for handheld G.P.S. units need to be updated as well, usually by uploading the new data to a memory card. An update for Garmin's popular MapSource unit is $75

now that I think about it, for utility rides, if I discover I need to go somewhere I don’t go often within the city, I often follow google’s route advice for cycling. it gives decent choices with regard to hills and rarely picks a terrible route. checking a few full crosstown routes, it picks exactly what I’d do and knows about slow streets, car free streets, and MUPs.

so it’s getting there - can’t speak for garmin but I imagine it’s far worse.

No, nothing you quoted talks about “a guy picking routes”. Your recollection was flawed.

Not sure what your point is anyway.

It takes a while for people to develop new technology and technology tends to get cheaper over time. This is isn’t news.

The update issues existed with paper maps and the update rate was much, much slower. And people often had to repurchase paper maps to get updates (which they didn’t do anyway). Or the paper maps didn’t include the elements that changed frequently.



This issue is much worse either paper maps. And, people generally don’t keep buying paper map (they just keep using the first maps they purchased). And those maps didn’t have Italian restaurants or ATMs either.

Google is using a room full of computers plugged into a power station.

Garmin is using a tiny computer on your handlebar that people want to run for hours on a battery.

They are exactly the same thing. /s

As I said, planning routes elsewhere (especially for cycling) is generally going to be the better choice (if it’s an available option).

…not to mention probably spending orders of magnitude more on the algorithms, data, talent etc that come up with the product.

A setting in the device that tells it to avoid gravel roads and drive on paved roads is why.

The only setting on this device is do I want the shortest distance or the fastest time, road surface is not a selection. The Nuvi is designed for automotive travel, thus the only routing is for automobiles. I do not recall, there might be a pedestrian mode too, but if there is, I doubt that is why it told me to drive a few extra hundred miles.

Enabling gravel roads on a Garmin nüvi device is a straightforward process that involves adjusting the "Avoidances" in your navigation settings. Since the nüvi is an automotive GPS, its primary function is to keep you on paved roads, so you'll need to explicitly tell it that unpaved roads are acceptable.
Here's a general step-by-step guide:
* Access the Settings Menu:
* From the main menu of your nüvi, select Settings. On some older models, this might be under a Tools menu.
* Look for an option called Navigation or Route Preferences.
* Find the "Avoidances" Menu:
* Within the Navigation or Route Preferences settings, you will see an Avoidances menu. This is where you can select which types of road features the device should avoid.
* Common avoidances include highways, tolls, ferries, and carpool lanes.
* Disable "Unpaved Roads" Avoidance:
* In the Avoidances list, you should see an option for Unpaved Roads (it might also be labeled as "Gravel Roads," "Dirt Roads," etc.).
* If this option has a checkmark next to it, the device is actively trying to avoid these roads. Uncheck this box to disable the avoidance.
By unchecking this box, you are telling the nüvi that it is acceptable to use unpaved roads when calculating a route.
Important Considerations:
* Shorter Distance vs. Faster Time: Even with the unpaved road avoidance disabled, your nüvi will still likely prioritize a paved route if it is deemed faster. If you want a more adventurous, non-paved route, change your route preference to "Shorter Distance" instead of "Faster Time." A shorter distance route is more likely to include gravel roads if they provide a more direct path to your destination.
* Map Data: The accuracy of gravel road navigation depends on the map data loaded on your device. While the map may show a road, it might not have the specific data to identify it as a gravel or unpaved surface.
* Safety: Always use your own judgment when navigating on unpaved roads, as your nüvi will not be able to account for current road conditions, such as mud, snow, or washed-out sections.

Thanks. It was hard to find, but it was avoiding unpaved roads. Had to uncheck the box.

Although I am a strong advocate for digital mapping and GPS integrated products, I do concede the learning curve and work flows are challenging to learn for those accustomed to legacy systems.

It might be a decade old, but with the lifetime map updates (which I was happy to pay for that upgrade), it is as good as new. Exception, the Li Ion battery in it has lost 99 percent of it's capacity. But storing it in a hot vehicle in summer sun, that battery was shot in only a year or two.

When things work well and meet your needs, I see no reason to throw them out simply because more bells and whistles are newly available. But in this case, I had forgotten about setting that up over a decade ago. The unpaved roads box to uncheck was on page two of the avoidance list, I think I only saw page one when I initially set it up.

That said, I replace things when they no longer function like they should. Too many apps did not work on my Android 7 phones a year ago so I bought new phones at that time.