Routing options

The only way of changing this behavior is with the Routing Mode. Your best option is going to be Road. I think some of the older units had a Touring option. It's possible that disabling Narrow Trails in Avoidances might help (but it probably won't do anything). You might try enabling Minimize Time (rather than distance).

Activity Profiles> Navigation> Routing

Avoidance Setup will enable you to exclude Major Highways. I agree with dpawlyk about avoiding Narrow Trails and Minimizing Time. You could also try turning off Popularity Routing, as I suspect that cycle paths may be more popular.

In the extreme, you could set the Routing to Automobile Driving.

I was looking for these settings in the wrong place, I can see where they are now

1. Select Menu > Settings > Activity Profiles.
2. Select a profile.
3. Select Navigation > Routing > Routing Mode.

So I was set to:

Popularity Routing: ON

Routing Mode: Road Cycling

Calculation Method: Minimize Distance

Avoidance: Major Highways + Toll Roads

According the these settings, the behavior of what I am seeing does not correspond.

Going to try:

Routing Mode: Motorcycle Driving

Calculation Method: Minimize Distance

Avoidance: Everything

It does seem like all the settings are there, but if the elements in the map do not mesh with the settings obviously this will not work. And clearly the device is on following Minimize distance.

However, I am really not sure I understand how Popularity routing works, and if this is just overriding all the other settings.

I will see how the Motorcycle routing works.

Keep in mind that motorcycles can go anywhere cars can. Which means there has to be a difference between "automobile" and "motorcycle".

I believe "motorcycle" tries to find twisty roads that are not highways. So, you might not end up with the shortest route. Both will (should) avoid cycleways.

For what you appear to want, you might try "automobile" with "avoid highways".

I believe "popularity" just shows you popular routes as options (it doesn't affect route calculations).

With the automobile and motorcycle routing the device just popped up with a message like "your device has no routable maps for this option". So those were a bust.

Oddly, the setting that seemed to make the biggest difference was calculation method. Switching this to time, eliminated many routing to cycle paths.

Here are the best settings I could come with:

Popularity Routing: OFF

Routing Mode: Road Cycling

Calculation Method: Minimize Time

Avoidance: Toll Roads and Ferries

But regardless of how I set the values, on my normal ride home I get to a point where I am 2.6km from home, on the road, and the device always routes me on to a bike path that would make the distance 3.9km. After about 200 meters, it does accept my normal route, but find it irritating this preference to increase the ride distance by this much in order to get on the bike path.

The only solution is appearing to be to replace the maps with ones with no bike paths...but that is not what I want, as if i do that and I get on the bike path, then routing will not work at all. However, this is the lesser of the 2 evils for me.

af0002 said:

Oddly, the setting that seemed to make the biggest difference was calculation method. Switching this to time, eliminated many routing to cycle paths.

I made that suggestion 10 days ago. 

It probably works the same way that using highways for cars does. Highways are classified as being faster than other roads. Presumably, cycleways are classified as slower than roads. Thus, “faster” makes the router prefer the faster roads (to some limit).

It might be useful to see the route.

I used different maps to see if the problem was any different.

garmin.openstreetmap.nl/

Generic Routable - only one place where I get routed on to what I consider a "Bicycle Path". And what is odd, is if I am on a path, it actually tries to route me off the bicycle path and on to the road. This map results in the most desirable option.

Generic Routable (new style) - missing tiles for my area, so I could not use it.

Routable Bicycle (Openfietsmap Lite) - with these maps everywhere I ride near "Bicycle Paths" I routes me off the road and on to the path. This was quite a bit worse that the standard maps

Standard Maps that come with Garmin 530 - routing on on the Bicycle paths in some locations.

So, the problem was quite a bit different with different maps.

While, I do see the logic in having a Cycling computer route a cyclist on to a bicycle path, it does not seem logical that routes on to bicycle paths be chosen if they are significantly longer. In some cases, the device was creating a route that was 50% longer on bicycle paths.

There needs to be setting that is:

Use Bicycle Paths - with the following options:

As much as possible (at cost of making route longer) - which is the current behaviour
Only if this does not make route longer
Never

I am curious as to what exactly the following settings do:

Calculation Method: Minimize Time / Minimize Distance

Because from what I see, regardless of how you set it, it does neither. I cannot say for certain, but I would guess what this device is doing is applying a reduction factor to all bicycle paths, thus why it is choosing, but in doing this it relegates the effect of the Calculation Method.

Also, what does Avoidance Setup do?

Does it completely stop routing to the options? or does it apply a factor to these items to make them less desirable?

Like the Bicycle Paths the Avoidance Setup should really have 3 options instead of 2. Something like this:

Allow
Only Allow if it makes route shorter
DO not allow

For now it seems like my solution is to use the Generic Routable maps.

The "Generic routable" is intended for automobiles (which works for road biking except for motorways). The different "generic routables" is just a difference in how the maps look.

The "Routable bicycle" is more intended for touring (in Europe), where there are "cycleways". These maps were set-up for older units (like the 800), which means they might do unexpected things on newer units.

From what I recall, they classify cycleways as "motorways" so that using the "automobile" routing, there routing would prefer cycleways over other roads/paths.

The "avoidance" settings basically drop consideration of particular road/path types. That is, it's as if roads of that type don't exist in the map.

Your "three options" idea probably would not be practical for such slow computers since considering "longer" and "shorter" requires calculating multiple alternative routes (which would be slow).

The "road cycling" option should rank cycle paths as less favorable. The "touring cycling" option should rank cycle paths as more favorable.

I do not think having more options would likely slow down the route calculation, as the options would not increase the calculations, they just change the criteria for the options. I suspect what this device is doing is just applying a factor to every vector, and all bicycle paths it gets a lower factor to increase the likely hood the path will be taken. I want to change the factor for bicycle paths to a value higher than roads so, it will be unlikely to be chosen.

However, even if there was a setting like "Road Cycling" that only allowed for routing on the road, that would be good enough for me. The problem is, the only setting I have ever used is the "Road Cycling". And the device consistently tries to route on to bicycles paths if it has a route to them and at the cost of making the distance of the route longer.

From what I am seeing the reason Generic Routable map is helping is because there is no routing information in the maps on how to get on to the bicycle paths in most cases, and that is why it seems to help.

I am surprised that I have not seen other comments on this issue before...But I guess most cyclists like riding on bike paths, just not me.

You are saying pretty much vh what I did.

But using shorter as a requirement may mean calculating multiple routes. That would be slow.