Ridewithsgps site
 

I use a Garmin 705 on our tandem and have been trying to deal with Mapsource quirks for quite some time. I've tried Mapmyride and bikeroute toaster, but haven't found them very friendly. Somehow I stumbled on to Ridewithgps.com and it looks pretty promising. The routing is very fast, bike trails are supported and I can store direction in a Garmin-friendly format, either routes or tracks. The climbing figues appear more realistic than I've gotten out of other applications. Anyway, it's free, no ads and worth a try if you're dissatisfied with whatever you're using.

Not a bad site, looks pretty similar to Mapmyride. I like the elevation graph. I don't use any [Garmin] devices.

The dealbreaker for me with Ridewithgps is that it doesn't treat the major bike path I regularly take, the Burke-Gilman Trail, as a road, so I'd have to manually draw the path each time.

I really like the site as well. The developers are also very responsive to suggestions/input.
However, i always find the elevations numbers to be significantly higher on their website,
as compared to other sites, as well as to my garmin.

For accurate elevation data, I would suggest you download USGS topo maps. (Downloads are still free, you can pay a reasonable fee to get them on CD.) I live in the middle of a 2.2 million acre national forest and most of the unimproved forest roads I ride during good weather aren't on commercial maps. However, they are on the USGS topo maps. I have hacked my MIO C320 and run MioPocket, which turns my GPS unit into a CE-based PIM. This has allowed me to install other GPS apps including Ozi Explorer CE. I use Ozi Explorer to pull up the topo maps when I ride the forest here.

That's strange about the elevation numbers. I assume your speaking to elevation gain. Nothing seems to inflate elevation gain like my Garmin 705. In the end I just want the elevation gain to be consistent from track to track which I hope will be the case. Whatever algorithm they're using at least it doesn't contain the noise that you get when you're actually riding the course.

Ha! This is nice. I like Garmin Map Source but it's car-centric, even with bike option on it would tell you to ride on highways. This seems neat:) Thanks.

Edit: Um... never mind, in the cycling mode it ignores street directions: it told me to ride 1st Ave in Manhattan in the South direction from 34th street all the way to Houston, which is wrong way :( The correct route would be 2nd Ave.

Adam

I hear you about the garmin 705, but with the latest firmware upgrade 3.1, it allows you to set the elevation at point that you specify (i use my home for example).
That elevation that you enter seems to be used by the garmin and it calculates elevation numbers taking that into account (almost like a manual calibration).
I have found it to be spot on after that, at least it matches quite well with some of the topo data that i've seen.

Thanks for this tip. I will check it out.

I find the elevation data, itself, to be quit accurate regardless of where I start, but the climbing data is another matter entirely. I understand that the Garmin records raw elevation, or at least the minimally filtered output of a filter combining GPS elevation (long term accurate) and pressure altitude. The noise on relatively flat courses produces a good deal of "climbing" just based on data noise. In the end it's all relative.

Most any site is going to exaggerate the elevation gain. The main problem is that the elevation calculations don't take into account the actual road. For instance, if you cross a bridge, the program assumes that you followed the contour instead of staying level on a bridge. Same thing where you went through a tunnel instead of going over the mountain. MMR, BRT, Bikely and the likes all sort of use the same data to make those computations - their smoothing algorithm usually is what makes the difference. The point here is that you need to compare route to route, not site to site.

RideWithGPS has done a great job so far. Hopefully, they don't get bored with it and keep things improving. As with many of these sites, the developers get something going, then get bored with it or just don't have the time to continually improve it. No offense to bikeroutetoaster, MapMyRide, bikejournal.com - they all make great stuff, but there really hasn't been any new features added in a while.

My Garmin 305 thinks I've climbed a mountain when I get downtown. Tall buildings and trees confuse the heck out of it.

Eh... I uploaded a 50Kb GPX file with some waypoints last night, 18 hours ago and it's still "processing it". Looks like this site is in beta.

Adam

This processing thing seems pretty "unique" for the site. Here's what it's telling me after uploading a route to it
"Currently processing 120.4 KB of trip data, uploaded about 23 hours ago" :notamused:

Currently processing 77 KB of trip data, uploaded 2 days ago

for me.
Needs some improvement or a server reset I would say.

I had that long processing time also, and closed down my browser and started over. Finished quickly like usual, so I'd just recommend aborting and starting over if you get long wait times.

Eh: "Currently processing 50.2 KB of trip data, uploaded 5 days ago"...

The problem is not on your computer but on their server. I've restarted my computer a few times since then. There is no option to abort the task once the file is uploaded.

I've done some more routing and it's pretty useless because of the way it ignores street directions in cycling mode: riding on highway service roads wrong way is suicide.

Edit.: Ouch, I just realized that it does the same in driving mode: tells me to drive the wrong way :eek:

http://a-world.net/files/WrongWay.jpg

And... if driving wrong way wasn't bad enough it tells me to drive over a pedestrian crossover, that part over the highway is a narrow pedestrian bridge with no vehicular access whatsoever:

http://a-world.net/files/WrongWay2.jpg

Adam

Yeah, i find the autorouting somewhat annoying with ridewithgps. I have to be careful which side of the road i click the mouse on, otherwise it seems to think
i'm going to the other lane and adds all these U-turns. Bikeroutetoaster doesn't have this issue.
I do like the elevation/grade on ridewithgps better than having to go to the summary tab with BRT.

I received a response to my feedback from ridewithgps' Cullen. The second issue, with the pedestrian overpass, was most likely due to the map being stuck in the cycling mode. When I tried to repeat that later, I couldn't replicate it. The problem with ignoring street directions is with Google data, not their software. BTW, Bikeroutetoaster has the same problems with ignoring street directions :(

Adam