I received this email a little while ago and wondered if anyone could add some feedback:
Richard from Cyclelicious here.  I’ve written a bike routing application that works for New Zealand, but since California is a long ways from there I’m wondering if you could take a look. I’d love some
feedback if you don’t mind.The map app is at http://www.cyclelicio.us/map/
In this example, I request a route from Mangere Bridge to a point west of Mt Wellington:  http://goo.gl/A6GFN
MapQuest says the routing should work for distances of up to about 500 km.
The nerdy details: The routing is provided by MapQuest, which in turn uses bicycle facility data from the OpenStreetMap (OSM) project. OSM is a crowd sourced online map — think of it as a map version of
Wikipedia. Hence, the map is only as accurate as the user provided data.From glancing at the Auckland cycle maps I can find online, it doesn’t appear you have much in the way of off-street cycleways. Still, it’s important to ensure those cycleways are properly “connected” in the map data — in other words, MapQuest doesn’t route you on the cycleway if the cycleway is not connected to a road.  I discuss that a little bit at this blog post: http://www.cyclelicio.us/2010/compare-google-mapquest-bike-route/
A couple of things I’ve noticed:
- Mapquest can’t route between certain cities — for example, Auckland to Wellington. I see roads, but I don’t know if it’s legal to cycle on those roads.
- Is there ferry service between North Island and South Island? It doesn’t appear the ferry services are in OSM. If the ferry information are in OSM, then MapQuest will route cyclists on a ferry.
Thanks a million!
Richard…your Coronation Rd to Hugo Johnston Dr map looks great to me. It uses the 'old' bridge over the water and connects nicely along the way with some good, scenic riding.
Re the highways between Auckland and Wellington etc….any open highway can be ridden by cyclists, but there's no cycling on motorways…e.g. the Southern Motorway from the centre of Auckland to a point an hour or so south of the city (by car) where the motorway becomes a 'normal' state highway.
There is a ferry service across Cook Strait between Wellington (North Island) and Picton (South Island); multiple sailings per day/night which take passengers, cars/trucks etc and of course bikes.
Re your app…I would certainly use it if proved reliable and relatively easy to use. How would you market it/price it?
Graham (graham@desktopnews.co.nz)
Hi Richard,
Get in contact if you require more assistance around NZ, the app so far looks good and i think there are probably a number of group and shop rides that could be used to validate the cycleways in NZ as they often have sections that aren't on the road.
cheers
Hamish
hamishhillnz at Gmail
Pingback: New journey planner / Cycling in Wellington
Thanks for the feedback, all.
Since sending my inquiry, I've discovered a few things about the New Zealand map data. As I mentioned, OpenStreetMap (OSM) is a crowd sourced map, and the New Zealand effort isn't quite as mature as some other areas, unfortunately. An initial import of road information has been done, and some major central cities seem somewhat usable, but anything intracity or even suburban are incomplete and, unfortunately, not quite ready for prime time.
Information about New Zealand's OSM effort is found here:
http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/WikiProject_New_Zealand
— getting the cycling community involved is a good way to ensure bike routing works throughout New Zealand.
I don't ever plan to charge for software use and it's all open source (I still haven't decided on which open source license yet, though, and not yet well documented). If somebody would like to incorporate this on their own website (perhaps with Auckland starting point?) I'd be glad to help out.