Mountain passes and on-route

[davidr]

If you have ever tried to use Garmin MapSource or Google Maps to plan a nice bike trip through the Alps or some other mountain range, you will be familiar with the scenario that helps you plan a route that actually avoids some of the best mountain passes. The reason for this is because the route calculation algorithm deems many of the twisty mountain passes to be a feasible route for travel which is pretty paradoxical if you're using a Zumo or similar because probably those are the routes that you actually want to find and ride on.

On-Route ois not completely immune from some of these problems it does however offer a substantial improvement to MapSource and Google Maps as there are many more configurable options for the user to construct a route and choose what he or she likes to see.

Here is an example:

Imagine that I want to go to Italy and ride the Stelvio Pass, So I use Garmin MapSource to go from Bormio in Italy to Prato Allo Stelvio. From the preferences I carefully select that I do not like highways and prefer minor roads then I ask MapSource for my route and I get the following:



Hmmm, that wasn't really what I wanted . . .

Let's try that with on-route:



Sometimes however in on-route, you will get a slightly different route if you choose 'take scenic routes where possible' as they may be a forest or a lake nearby which on-route prefers to take you near. In this case, simple select 'Secondary roads' instead of 'scenic roads' and you will get another option.