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Bridleways and footpaths

I have started cycling off-road in the English countryside in the past few weeks and am beginning to suspect that my Edge does not know the difference between a bridleway (where it’s lawful to cycle) and a footpath (where it isn’t). This such a basic distinction for a cyclist that I assume (and sincerely hope) that I am making some error in the settings.

Please tell me Garmin hasn’t released a cycling navigation product (or even whole range of them) which carefully plots routes it is illegal to cycle on?

  • It is a problem with the Edge units.  Paths can have the correct tags in OSM (which Garmin use for their maps) correctly stating whether cycling is allowed or not.  The Edge units ignore this completely for some reason and have for a long time.  I don't know why.  Garmin's Basecamp software will correctly avoid these paths in bike routing mode so they know how to do it.

    I am not sure if the Garmin maps have paths correctly tagged with the permissions either.  I am not a huge fan of the Garmin cycle maps.

    There are ways around it.  You can use get maps where the road and path types have been modified to affect bicycle routing.  Using these maps will require some routing settings tweaking to use properly.  Look at https://www.velomap.org/ for this.

    I do it a different way which takes a good bit of time to set up but once that is done it is pretty quick and easy to do.  I create my own maps and strip out every path that is specifically tagged in OSM bicycle=no.  Then the Edge unit cannot route down these paths as they are missing.  If you come upon a path that needs the permissions adding you need to edit the OSM map, wait a day or so and download the latest map data for your region so the edit is included and recreate the map.  I can show you how I do it if you wish.

    I started doing this before Garmin provided free cycle maps and the only mapping options were to source ones yourself or pay for Garmin maps.

  • That is helpful. Thank you. I will take a look at some of the options you mention but I am astounded that Garmin should have done this. Encouraging cyclists to break the law in this way is at best outrageously sloppy and at worst criminally negligent.

  • Hi dude, I'd love to know how to do this as I want to stay off roads and footpaths as much as poss.

  • I have an long open ticket with Garmin about this issue. They seem to have lost interest and I don’t expect a reply. They told me that this information isn’t part of the dataset they get from their map supplier but would look into it. I’m not holding my breath.

    As it currently stands, no Garmin product can  be used to plot a lawfully navigable off-road cycling route in England or Wales. 

  • The only way around it would be to create your own maps with paths that cyclists are not allowed on removed.  This is possible to do.

    If you find paths that don't have appropriate permissions you can edit the OSM data and then create a new map with the updated information.

  • The problem is that in rural parts of the UK there are a huge number of paths and bridleways. It would simply be impracticable to create my own map of the many hundreds or thousands of footpaths within cycling distance of my house. I looked into it and it just isn’t viable. 

    It is possible to create and download navigable routes to the Edge by using an Ordnance Survey based app where this basic distinction is recognised and respected by routing algorithms. Of course, while you can follow a predetermined route, you still can’t use the unit for creating new routes or finding your way back home while out on the bicycle - circumstances in which you might hope a satnav would be most useful.

  • It isn't as hard as you think.

    You download the UK OSM data.  You can then run a tool to automatically remove/keep any ways that have specific tags.  So you could use this tool to delete and way designated as a public footpath or has a no bicycle restriction.  Then you compile the result into a Garmin map.  Once you have all the commands set up it takes less than 20 minutes from starting processing the downloaded OSM data to having a map ready to copy onto a Garmin unit.

    I create my own maps and automatically filter out map features I don't want.  I specifically remove all ways tagged bicycle=no to remove paths that I can't cycle down (I have a road bike so I don't bother with public footpaths as I wouldn't be tempted to use those anyway) to prevent the routing algorithms direct me onto one.

  • I checked when we last discussed this and all the footpaths I looked at incorrectly allowed cycling. I may have been unlucky or the OSM maps, while noting some (user supplied?) non-cycleable routes, do not properly distinguish between bridleways or footpaths. Unless they have been compiled from OS maps or local authority records, I am not sure how they can. 

  • If the path is marked as a public footpath by a sign you can mark it as one in OSM as it is a public footpath.  You don't need council records.  Not all paths are marked properly but if you come across those you can fix them.

  • It’s the public footpaths that are the issue. I can’t tell from OSM which are public footpaths and which are bridleways because it doesn’t distinguish them. The only way to do what you suggest is to crosscheck every public footpath in OSM against OS maps and mark as non-cyclable all those that aren’t shown on OS as bridleways. There are about 5,000 miles of public footpaths within an easily cycled radius of where I live. I’d estimate that only 15 or 20% of them - perhaps fewer - are bridleways and thus cyclable. It would be a mammoth undertaking to create a bespoke map in this way, which is presumably why no-one has.