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Show HN: Trail Router – generate running routes that prefer greenery and nature

402 points by samcrawford 6y ago

samcrawford 6y ago
Author here. Trail Router is a running route planner that prefers greenery and nature in the routes it generates, and biases against busy roads. It can generate round-trip routes that meet a specified distance, as well as point-to-point routes. I've written a detailed blog post about how Trail Router works here: https://trailrouter.com/blog/how-trail-router-works/ https://trailrouter.com/blog/how-trail-router-works/ I developed this because I am (or was...) a frequent traveller for work, and I like to run wherever I visit. But I don't enjoy running on busy main roads, and I found that without careful and time consuming route planning that is often what would end up happening if I didn't know the area. Trail Router is my solution to this problem. After a previous discussion (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23177351 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23177351) received quite a lot of attention, dang reached out to suggest I post a Show HN to reach a wider audience. I've addressed some of the original feedback too - for example, you can now prefer hills in your routes, as well as avoid them.
- pj_mukh 6y ago
  We sorely need this for cycling. Komoot is the closest thing but it doesn’t do mileage requests like your app here. This is awesome! EDIT: In addition to optimizing for green routes, optimizing for low speed car zones would be a killer feature.
  - samcrawford 6y ago
    Thanks! Cycling is on the to-do list. But I'm conscious it probably wouldn't just be a single category - there would need to be separation for road cycling and mountain biking. The routing algorithm does already prefer roads with low speed limits, but there is definitely more that could be done in this space (e.g. a slider to set a preference to avoid higher speed roads). It also depends on the availability of speed limit data (I use the OpenStreetMap database).
    - nickswan 6y ago
      You could almost do with a ‘how safe you felt’ rating for each road. Would obviously take a while to build up the data.
    - 076ae80a-3c97-4 6y ago
      The state of apps/web apps for planning road cycling routes is abysmal. If you can implement this you'll immediately be the best.
      - cullenking 6y ago
        I am curious why you think this. I run https://ridewithgps.com https://ridewithgps.com and always love constructive feedback to improve. There’s always improvements to make, but I wouldn’t quite go as far as calling things abysmal!
      - goguy 6y ago
        The new Strava feature is pretty good IMO
      - malyk 6y ago
        footpath is pretty great for planning and adding features regularly
      - c0nsumer 6y ago
        One of the main reasons for this is a lack of data. The Strava Heatmap (crowdsourced data, based on past frequency of use) is pretty much the best. OSM tagging is insufficient for real good routing, and it doesn't take traffic patterns into account. Thus, a lot of route creation is dependent on hyperlocal knowledge. Strava Route Builder, with the heatmap, goes fairly far on this, but it too isn't the best. This is a really hard problem to solve.
    - pistoriusp 6y ago
      I frequently do 50km - 60km cycling routes from my home and I've manually figured out the greenest and least busiest routes. I tested it with your app and the route is near identical to what I've figured (over the course of several thousand km's of trial an error). I'm amazed! Edit: I'm usually on a mountain bike.
  - donjoe 6y ago
    cycle.travel does have a feature for mileage requests. It is not very much optimized for dirt routes though...
    - Doctor_Fegg 6y ago
      Thanks for the recommendation - cycle.travel’s my site! I’d like to do a dirt/gravel profile. Main reason I haven’t so far is that it’s very hardware-intensive (as in tipping over into renting another Hetzner box).
      - donjoe 6y ago
        Man thanks so much for your work! Been using it for some time now especially for planning long distance routes. That's where cycle.travel really shines (plus I really love the 3D altitude visualization ;-)). I usually tend to export routes and navigate with komoot. Komoot for long distance planning is terribly slow as soon as you hit ~200km+.
        karussell 6y ago
        I just wanted to reply this cannot be as Komoot is also using CH (fast routing algorithm using GraphHopper) but yes, they are relative slow for fast routes. The reason seems that they create a very big response (5MB) in these cases and then it takes more seconds to visualize this. For current & original GraphHopper the response is highly optimized and so it is much smaller (20x) even with comparable road data (like elevation, surface, bridges/tunnels and road class) btw: in general Komoot is a nicely polished app. I can only recommend it :)
        donjoe 6y ago
        I absolutely agree. Routing using a phone is loads of fun. I do have the paid version and I highly appreciate their open source-ish character. Besides large response data and a slaggish planning interface @ komoot: try routing from northern Italy to Sicily: Komoot doesn't seem to know the ferry departing in Villa s. Giovanni to Messina. Komoot will always - no matter how may vias you place - route you back north and send you on a ferry in Salerno. Yes, I know, I could split my route and such. Yet, I love the idea of my planning tool to show me the complete route - including official transportation ;-)
  - rorykoehler 6y ago
    Komoot does mileage requests. I use it nearly every ride.
  - stugrey 6y ago
    Maybe check out Huli who are working on exactly this amongst other things https://huli.life/ https://huli.life/
    - notatoad 6y ago
      this actually looks pretty cool, but if i'm being honest i just want to use it because they had the guts to call their company hooli.
    - efrecon 6y ago
      huli looks promising, but they just have cycling right now. It's a no go for long(ish) runners.
  - mvkel 6y ago
    This already exists! It’s an app called EasyRoute
- tijuco2 6y ago
  Mountain biker here. Google used to have a great app that was able to record the trails I went to. After that, I could share with my friends and they could do the same circuit just following the directions given by the app. That was a great way to discover and explore new routes. Like everything that works, google canceled the project. If you add this option, I can guarantee at least 20 news users to your platform.
- lfuller 6y ago
  This is actually a wonderful product - thanks for making it! I've looked for a website that did this for a long time, and this works surprisingly well. It actually produced a route that is very similar to one I found myself.
- karussell 6y ago
  The blog post provides a lot of insights. Good read. Some questions. Do you plan to support area routing? And you write: "However, the good news ended there: Openrouteservice does not publish the code for calculating this green index". Is your code publicly available and allows "the news to end good" ;) and maybe even integrated elsewhere?
  - samcrawford 6y ago
    Area routing is definitely a topic of interest. It looks like it's still a topic of discussion too: https://github.com/graphhopper/graphhopper/issues/82 https://github.com/graphhopper/graphhopper/issues/82. Maybe it's something I can help with in the future. Good point RE the green index calculation. The very least I could do would be to upstream a reference implementation and documentation back to Openrouteservice. I will take care of that.
- runnr_az 6y ago
  Super cool... this is definitely a thing I’ll use
- Schweigi 6y ago
  Wow, great project. I was working on exactly this in 2015 using Grasshopper but never finished it. I like how much time you invested to solve all the tiny details around the edge cases. Like prefering certain streets, no-hills and trying not to run the same street twice. It wasn’t clear to me from the blog article, does prefer “green” also prefer water areas?
  - samcrawford 6y ago
    Thanks! Yes, the "greenery" preference also prefers water.
    - fouc 6y ago
      It would be nice if the water preference could be adjusted in preferences perhaps.
      - samcrawford 6y ago
        Thanks, I'll consider breaking those two things out separately.
- cullenking 6y ago
  Hey Sam, I run ridewithgps.com and have been reaching into the guts of graphhopper to do interesting routing stuff as well. We just silently rolled out popularity based routing, where we used our database of 50mm rides to build a popularity graph which is used to add a popularity weight in routing decisions. Got a long pipeline of other projects coming out in the same space. Drop me a line if you ever want to yack about these things! cullen@ridewithgps.com
  - TrueGeek 6y ago
    Are you guys considering adding in more social features to compete with Strava? It’s seems an excellent opportunity right now with so many people upset with them. A simple UI update showing a feed, add a kudos system... you’re halfway there.
    - deleted 6y ago
      [deleted]
    - cullenking 6y ago
      That's actually one of our main focuses over the next two months, along with mapping and routing improvements. We've seen a decent uptick in people migrating, and they are asking for more social stuff. We've always been shy about becoming a social network, so our focus is on making it much easier to connect with people you know, see what they are doing, while making it optional and not pushing it too hard to our existing users.
  - cullenking 6y ago
    Reply to my own reply to say, I forgot to mention this is really cool, and a fun use of OSM data I hadn't thought of before. Nice work!
  - samcrawford 6y ago
    I certainly will, thanks! And congratulations on all your success with Ride with GPS. I'm not really a cyclist, so I only used it for the first time last night, but it looked and worked great for me.
- def8cefe 6y ago
  Have you considered creating an option to generate the closest all-nature route (not factoring in walking distance to the running route which you could use as a warm-up)? Very neat app.
  - samcrawford 6y ago
    Nice idea - consider it added to the potential todo list for the future. Thanks!
- nathancahill 6y ago
  Wow! I tried several different length runs, ever single one _perfectly_ matched some of my favorite routes. Shockingly good.
- c0nsumer 6y ago
  Thank you for doing this. For years I've contributed trail data to OpenStreetMap, mostly to support mountain biking, but this is the exact kind of other project it benefits. It was really neat being able to try this on local trails and see just what happens. One question: What tags does it give priority to? I ask because I tried it on a local trail system, and it seemed to prefer the wide paved and dirt path as opposed to the mountain bike trail. It was weird in that sometimes it'd use the single track, but in others it'd do sort of an awkward thing through the parking lot / service road (highway=service, service=parking_aisle) then use some of the single track (eg markers 1-2) before jumping on the paved path and pretty much ignoring the single track. The single track is really popular with trail runners in this park, so it got me wondering. An example of that is here: https://trailrouter.com/#wps=42.65195,-83.05484%7C42.65088,-83.05339%7C42.64784,-83.05312%7C42.64737,-83.04981%7C42.64361,-83.05201%7C42.64295,-83.04860%7C42.63185,-83.04142%7C42.63607,-83.04381%7C42.65195,-83.05484&ss=&rt=true&td=10000&aus=false&aus2=false&ah=0&ar=true&pga=0.8&im=true https://trailrouter.com/#wps=42.65195,-83.05484%7C42.65088,-...
  - samcrawford 6y ago
    Thanks for all your contributions to OSM! If you ignore all of the greenery preference then it gives priority to tags: foot=designated route=root, hiking highway=footway, path, track, bridleway, pedestrian, living_street, residential, service, unclassified maxspeed < 20km/h Looking at your area (https://www.openstreetmap.org/way/191828180#map=15/42.6423/-83.0444 https://www.openstreetmap.org/way/191828180#map=15/42.6423/-...), all of the trails are given equal preference. As a result, it then falls back to whichever gives the shortest path. It's choosing the asphalt one (linked above) just because it's the shortest path. In the future, I may add a surface preference option - so you could give additional preference to non-paved paths.
    - c0nsumer 6y ago
      Thank you very much for explaining that. That makes a lot of sense. I really wish there was a better way for tagging things like narrow/twisty natural surface trails vs. wide flat ones, but that seems all balled up in US vs. EU hiking things, MTB tagging... It's a mess. (Making it worse, someone naively editing a mountain bike trail in iD will end up inadvertently flagging it as highway=cycleway. And then people using OSM for cycling directions get routed down an MTB trail... Yay.)
- ddoeth 6y ago
  I think there might be a bug, check this out: https://imgur.com/a/DXhMWxG https://imgur.com/a/DXhMWxG I know for a fact that the second one is about right, because I ran it already. The first one however is somehow showing "shorter" kilometers, by the end it should be about 2.5km. Did I do something wrong?
  - samcrawford 6y ago
    The first one is an "out-and-back" (so it goes out 2>3>4>5, and then back 5>4>3>2).
    - ddoeth 6y ago
      Is there any way too see this? Because for both I selected Round trip. Also the first kilometer seems way too short in comparison to the second Edit: Wait, the numbers are not every kilometer, right?
      - samcrawford 6y ago
        There's no easy way to see it at the moment, other than looking at the waypoint list (the box at the top left). One idea I'm looking at is putting arrows on the line - so in this case you'd see arrows going both ways on the line. And yes, the numbers do not represent km, they represent the numbered waypoints listed in the top left box. Any usability suggestions are very much welcome!
        ddoeth 6y ago
        Thanks, yes. I think it would be nice to have some kind of range indication, maybe the waypoints could be letters so they don't get confusing? And then you can toggle distance measurements. And for the direction problem, maybe a change of color every kilometer or a gradient? Although that might also be confusing.
lostpixel 6y ago
Looks interesting! Have you considered providing a way to sync routes directly to Running watches?
- samcrawford 6y ago
  I actually have. Watch this space - there should be direct route syncing to Garmin and Suunto before terribly long. In the meantime, you can export routes to GPX/KML files already.
dang 6y ago
This project was discussed in the "quarantine side project" mega-thread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23177351 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23177351. Since people were interested, we invited Sam to repost it.
caiobegotti 6y ago
Wow, I'm actually impressed by how good the results were, I was not honestly expecting it! Lots of kudos! From the clean map interface and Strava heatmaps to defaulting to metric units, this is something I would even pay for!
- samcrawford 6y ago
  Quick anecdote... It defaulted to metric units globally when I first launched it ~8 months ago. But that quickly resulted in complaints from North American users, so it now defaults to imperial units in North America and metric everywhere else. Users can change it in the settings menu, of course. Thanks for the kind words!
- sqs 6y ago
  Yes, I was very impressed with the quality of the routes it generates. I live near Muir Woods (north of San Francisco), and it picked some great ones for me.
chrisdalke 6y ago
Nice job, the algorithm is really effective! I tried this in multiple cities where it ended up recommending very similar routes to some of my established running routes, and even some new combinations :) Love that your algorithm tries to exclude out-and-backs, I think that goes a long way to make the routes feel organic and appeal to runners. This is really polished and I wish you the best! One feature suggestion: I wonder if you could have a flag to generate routes starting in parking lots/park entrances in a radius around the starting location. This could go a long way to recommend some common long-run routes where you need to travel a brief distance via car or public transportation but then can get 10-20 miles entirely in the woods.
- samcrawford 6y ago
  Thanks! The avoidance of out-and-backs was a must-have for me. It can definitely be improved though. For example, right now the algorithm tries to avoid traversing the same path twice, but it will happily use a path that is only a few metres away! So adding some buffer around that (to penalise paths that are close to one already taken, if not the same) is a future bit of work. Your suggestion is a nice one. Here in the UK, where it's common to have trains connecting most towns and larger areas, I have thought about adding the ability to say "I want to run 20 miles, and finish at a train station that can get me home in under an hour". Assuming the user is using a car makes it more easily achievable though. Consider it on the todo list!
  - mtnGoat 6y ago
    wait, it avoids out-and-backs? could have fooled me, all the routes it showed for my house were out and backs, some had multiple points of out and back(like a letter Y or E)... i guess thats why i hate running near home, everything is an out and back and even the computer cant find an alternative. :)
    - samcrawford 6y ago
      It tries to! But if there's no good way to avoid them, then it will end up taking them anyway. More specifically, when 'avoid repetition' is enabled (it is by default), then the routing algorithm has a very significant penalty weight applied to any existing path already taken.
steven_pack 6y ago
Nice job! Two clicks on my phone and first route was spot on.
knownhoot 6y ago
this is AMAZING! very fast and planned some interesting routes in Portland that I hadn't thought of. I think i'll start using this over my premium strava route planner
jack_riminton 6y ago
This is really well done, congrats. I love the level of automation to make it so easy to use. Also the attention to UX, not just in the narrow UI sense but the actual experience of the trail. Some thoughts: - Create a community out of it so that people can rate the routes, and therefore provide feedback for the algo? - Use some google streetview or alternative for landmarks along the way so people remember what they should be seeing and don't get lost?
- samcrawford 6y ago
  UI/UX is most definitely not my forte, so I appreciate the kind words! Your suggestion RE landmarks tallies with an issue I've been grappling with: how does a user actually run with the route that they've just planned? Yes, you can export the route to a GPX file, and some users will use that on watches/apps to guide them, but it's a bit clunky and isn't the kind of thing you'd necessarily do for a short 5km run in a new area. I'd rather avoid building full run tracking functionality, as it'd just be repeating what so many other apps do (and often very well). Perhaps the answer is to enable easy syncing of the route to your other apps. Strangely, Strava (the most popular) don't allow importing of routes via their API.
  - benjaminl 6y ago
    I was think the same thing. The routes generated are really great, but how would I actually use the routes. As some of the routes are pretty complicated. I use an Apple Watch and it would be great to use that. My preference would be to use Apple Map directions. But it isn’t possible to specify waypoints. But the official Google Maps URL spec supports specifying waypoints. It would be awesome to click on a link to open the route in Google Maps for turn-by-turn directions. https://developers.google.com/maps/documentation/urls/guide#directions-action https://developers.google.com/maps/documentation/urls/guide#...
  - Doctor_Fegg 6y ago
    Garmin have an import API (I’m just setting it up with cycle.travel). I’ve suggested an “open this URL to get a polyline” intent to the Osmand devs and they’ve built it but I’m not convinced it’s live yet.
js2 6y ago
Ha, it makes the same route planning mistake I did years ago when I was in Rome. I was staying near the Colosseum and for one of my runs, thought I’d run on the Appia Antica, because oldest road in the world, into Parco della Caffarella because it looked like a really nice park with lots of trails. Well, next thing I know I’m running down a one-way cobblestone road with cars coming toward me and there’s no entrance into the park because there’s a huge wall between the road and the park. The road had walls on both sides in fact. I didn't want to turn around because I’d have the cars to my back. So I hugged that wall as close as I could and trusted the shit out of Roman drivers. Eventually I found a way into the park. Here’s the route Trail Router gave me: • https://ibb.co/k8m18xq https://ibb.co/k8m18xq Here's the run I did that day: • https://ibb.co/pK6xqMX https://ibb.co/pK6xqMX The road starts out looking great: • https://ibb.co/998GQk3 https://ibb.co/998GQk3 (my picture) • https://ibb.co/DYXkBt5 https://ibb.co/DYXkBt5 (google maps) But very soon you're on this: • https://ibb.co/vJcCSXr https://ibb.co/vJcCSXr (google maps) Well, it was all worth it because eventually I got into the park and I'm still alive: • https://ibb.co/52VgT1W https://ibb.co/52VgT1W • https://ibb.co/dbvG6f5 https://ibb.co/dbvG6f5 • https://ibb.co/ZTPknP3 https://ibb.co/ZTPknP3 • https://ibb.co/VWxrwnB https://ibb.co/VWxrwnB I know you're at the mercy of map data. I don't know how unique this situation is. I always appreciate a new route planning tool. I usually use a combination of Footpath Route Planner, the heat maps from Strava, and Google Maps street view and satellite view. It's definitely a pain to do that for every trip. Maps are definitely not optimized for pedestrian safety, and things like sidewalks and shoulder-width are often inaccurate or just not there on the maps short of bringing up street view.
- samcrawford 6y ago
  Thanks for the feedback, appreciated. The reason it suggested that route was (1) the park, as you found, and (2) the Via Francigena hiking route (https://www.viefrancigene.org/en/ https://www.viefrancigene.org/en/ & https://www.openstreetmap.org/relation/6201614 https://www.openstreetmap.org/relation/6201614) follows this road. One item for consideration in the future is allowing users to flag unsafe portions of a route and then having that visible to other users (and also influence the algorithm).
  - 6y ago
JimDabell 6y ago
It seems to work well for my location. I have been living in my current home for six months and I’ve made an effort to plan out greener routes around me for various distances. Trail Router comes up with similar routes when I put those distances in. It’s not perfect – it seems to prefer joining up parks that are long distances away from one another as long as there’s a river along the route instead of joining up parks that are closer together. But it’s a lot better than I expected.
codingdave 6y ago
I live in a small town that is getting grown over by suburbia. The routes ignore all the nice open farm fields to the east of me, and runs me down the busiest streets through some of the most dangerous intersections in my entire state, just to skim by the edge of a park in the city. In that same 6 mile distance, in addition to running past the farms, it could have run me up to the base of the mountains, down the nice bike trail that goes through groves of trees and open field, then back home. This is one reason I love testing apps like this - my town almost always messes them up.
- samcrawford 6y ago
  Would you mind sharing the name of your town? Feel free to email me directly if you wish, contact details are in my profile. It could be that OpenStreetMap data (which I use extensively in the algorithm) isn't very detailed for your area, but I'm keen to investigate further.
  - codingdave 6y ago
    I don't mind sharing the town - Spanish Fork, UT 84660 Especially check out the east side of town, it seems like it wants to go into town for anything short of a 15 mile loop, whereas going east is far more natural.
    - samcrawford 6y ago
      It's not finding any green 'features' in the vicinity (I know, the mountain range off to the east would beg to differ...), so it's falling back to guessing a direction in which to head. I can see that the Uinta-Wasatch-Cache National Forest is tagged properly in OpenStreetMap though (https://www.openstreetmap.org/relation/3502235 https://www.openstreetmap.org/relation/3502235), so this should be something I'm able to improve on. Thanks again for your feedback!
yachtman 6y ago
Major fail, I live like two blocks from one of the most beautiful and popular lush and quiet rail trails in the country and is perfect for running and even has mile markers for runners and instead of taking me there it took me through an incredibly busy shopping complex and over an interstate to a nearby park that's not running friendly
- jack_riminton 6y ago
  I wondered how long it’d take for a snarky, overly critical comment. So you tried one route and by this anecdotal evidence you’ve deemed it a “Major fail”. No constructive criticism on how to improve the app, no positive comments on anything at all. In other words, you’re a dick
  - dang 6y ago
    Please don't respond to a bad comment with an even worse one. That just makes things even worse, and is exactly what the site guidelines ask you not to do: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
    - jack_riminton 6y ago
      Apologies for the angry response
- samcrawford 6y ago
  Sorry to hear that. If you could share your approximate location, then I'll gladly investigate.
  - yachtman 6y ago
    Sure thing. I won't here as that would be violating TOS for site
- dang 6y ago
  This comment breaks the Show HN guidelines: https://news.ycombinator.com/showhn.html https://news.ycombinator.com/showhn.html and arguably the site guidelines also: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html It's great to give helpful feedback about bugs, but please edit out swipes like "Major fail" when doing so. They're especially noxious when someone's presenting their own work. We want people do to that freely on HN, and get helpful feedback, not internet nastiness.
voisin 6y ago
Is there a way to show the elevation associated with a route?
- samcrawford 6y ago
  Yes - click on the little up arrow in the mile/km distance box at the bottom of the screen. It will show you elevation, as well as the type of paths taken.
hobofan 6y ago
Looks very nice! Just started out running and especially the feature that it outputs multiple routes of similar lengths (which I can slowly increase) to have some variation is very appealing! From what I can see the routes all look very runnable with a lot of greenery.
etrautmann 6y ago
This is an amazing tool, I just downloaded the app and am excited to use it routinely. Thank you!
saeranv 6y ago
This is great. I move around a lot, and one of the big headaches I always have is figuring out a decent route to run. The only thing I would request is having an option to have completely circular routes, rather then having routes that require running back the way you came.
annoyingnoob 6y ago
Looks interesting. It missed the multi-use trail that wraps around the area where I live - though its not on google maps either.
- samcrawford 6y ago
  It may be that the trail near you isn't on OpenStreetMap (https://openstreetmap.org https://openstreetmap.org). If you're interested in fixing that (and thus the myriad of tools that rely on OpenStreetMap data), head to https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Getting_Involved https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Getting_Involved
christiansakai 6y ago
This gonna be a hit!
ganstyles 6y ago
This is cool! Strava has a new feature where they'll plan a route for you: give a mileage range and a starting spot. When you tell Strava to prioritize trails vs paved, you get good results. Interesting very similar to yours, so that's really impressive given they're a large company with a big budget, or perhaps it says more about my location.
e15ctr0n 6y ago
Love the idea. Great blog posts as well. This one alone https://trailrouter.com/blog/how-trail-router-works/ https://trailrouter.com/blog/how-trail-router-works/ would have taken you several hours to write!
- rosstex 6y ago
  Hours? I would stress for a day on that! Bravo.
seattle_spring 6y ago
This is really fantastic. Thanks for making this! One suggestion: Have changes to the route push state to the history. That way you can use the back button on the browser if you make a mistake. Right now it'll totally take you off of the page.
- samcrawford 6y ago
  Thanks very much! Personally I find it a little annoying if a site pushes state to the history very frequently. If I genuinely want to get off the site I end up clicking back loads, and then go too far! I tried to solve this in Trail Router by putting an undo button on the screen (bottom right).
  - seattle_spring 6y ago
    I would just follow how Google Maps works. I think that's how my brain was expecting Trail Router to work, since it visually and functionally is very similar to using the "Directions" feature of GMaps.
WD-42 6y ago
Nice work! I tried it out for my local area and it ended up suggesting some routes that are very similar to my existing runs/rides.
ak217 6y ago
This is awesome! I've tried it on a few areas that I know well, and it really did a good job. I really love running in new places as a way to explore my area as well as when I travel. I find there is something profoundly good about connecting with my surroundings that way. I use Strava Route Planner with the heatmap extensively, and now I think I'll be consulting this a lot. My only suggestion is to show an elevation profile. There is already a hill preference slider in the settings, but the elevation profile would really make it great to look at.
- samcrawford 6y ago
  You're in luck, both of those things are already supported! For viewing the elevation profile, click on the little up arrow on the miles/km distance box at the bottom of the screen. You can configure a hills preference (either to prefer them or to avoid them) in the settings screen. Click on the cog icon to get there. More details are available at https://trailrouter.com/blog/greenery-and-hills-sliders/ https://trailrouter.com/blog/greenery-and-hills-sliders/
egypturnash 6y ago
I am looking at the route it is generating from my place in New Orleans and comparing it against my own mental route generator for cycling and it’s not doing so well. It’s got me running parallel to Jeff Davis Parkway instead of taking the trail along the very green parkway, then up the side of Bayou St. John with the least greenery (one side has a lot, the other has next to none). Maybe in part because the unofficial desire trails up the green side of the bayou that I regularly see joggers on don’t seem to exist on the map. Going though City Park makes sense; coming back I guess Cortez isn’t too bad a choice if “avoid repetition” is on, but avoiding Jeff Davis just seems super weird.
handol 6y ago
How often is the map data refreshed? If I submit an update to OSM, is there a way to verify that my changeset has made it to trail router?
charliebrownau 6y ago
Uses Apple CDN Wouldnt it be better to add to openstreet map
jwineinger 6y ago
I just loaded this and the map was centered on my house before I gave access to my location. I'm using current Firefox. Anyone know how that would happen?
- samcrawford 6y ago
  It uses geoIP data from Maxmind to approximately locate users even before they provide location information. It's not usually _that_ accurate though. It's just intended to get a user to the rough location that they're based in.
jordwest 6y ago
Wow. As soon as I gave it my location it plotted my favourite local return hike, very cool!
ogre_codes 6y ago
This is pretty cool, but there are definitely routes that pop up quickly that cross closed gates and trails that are not in good repair. I'd consider these to be good "Beta" routes, if you enjoy exploring and don't mind the occasional dead-end, but not super reliable if your time is limited. Not a complaint, if I ran these are the sort of routes I'd love to explore.
- samcrawford 6y ago
  That's very fair, thanks. In cities I wouldn't consider this to be much of an issue as an occasional dead end (e.g. road works) is easily manually avoided. But in more rural locations it can be frustrating. If you're seeing it in your area, then you could consider submitting a correction to OpenStreetMap. It's surprisingly easy to do. I update Trail Router with the latest OSM data roughly once per month.
necovek 6y ago
Pretty neat! I did see a problem with stairs — not sure if algorithm does not take into consideration or if data is not properly marked up in OpenStreetMap, but locally, it recommended a route goong over two long sets of stairs: one of them being practically a goat trail I would recommend against running on, but careful trodding is ok. The other stairs are long and wide, so probably not perfect for running (hard to figure out your stride), but ok. I wonder if elevation rate could be taken into account, which would probably exclude the goat trail one.
- samcrawford 6y ago
  Steps are supported in OSM, but I don't know if your ones in particular are tagged. Either way, Trail Router doesn't consider them by default. If there is a lot of elevation gain/loss when using the stairs, you can adjust the Hill Preference slider (in the settings screen) to indicate whether you prefer hills or would rather avoid them. You can read more about that here: https://trailrouter.com/blog/greenery-and-hills-sliders/ https://trailrouter.com/blog/greenery-and-hills-sliders/
senden9 6y ago
I tried to generate a 10km round trip route. It generated exactly the same route that I run normally :D
tinus_hn 6y ago
It’s quite amazing these days there’s enough free data and software available you can create such a tool on your own! How do you plan to make it pay the server costs though?
- samcrawford 6y ago
  Fully agreed - the amount of data openly available is astounding. I think many people would be surprised at the richness of the tagging information within OpenStreetMap. Without OpenStreetMap, this project and countless others would not be possible. Mapping costs would be by far the biggest one. However, I'm very lucky that after the last big spike in traffic, Mapbox very generously admitted me to their community programme. You can read more about that here: https://trailrouter.com/blog/mapbox-community-programme/ https://trailrouter.com/blog/mapbox-community-programme/ The server costs are quite modest at the moment (under $200/mo), which I'm lucky enough to be able to self-fund through my other work. If usage were to massively increase then maybe I'd need to find a way recoup costs. But even all of the hits from HN have barely put a dent in the server utilisation, so there's plenty of headroom for the foreseeable future.
wjnc 6y ago
Love the idea especially for when on holidays or in another town! I live I a very green environment and the maps generated are quite often 'wrong', that is not even near the routes I would suggest. Preferring urban areas to non-urban areas and seemingly not knowing of major walking paths in the forests nearby. The Strava map seems to know those paths, but OSM probably doesn't. Anybody know where I can dive deeper in OSM to find out what's going on? An example: my neighborhood is surrounded by a free laying cycling and walking path. Perhaps diametrically only 30m-100m from houses, but 100% green and rustic. Then the mapper plots a route on sidewalks in urban areas. It did recognize the no. 1 park around though. But I'd hope it would get the woods as well.
- samcrawford 6y ago
  Thanks! My suggestion would to start out by checking out your area on openstreetmap.org for two things: Firstly to check to see if the trail you refer to is shown (it should show up as a yellow dashed line if it's a trail). Secondly to see if the woods are shown (this should show in a light green shaded area). Trail Router uses the presence of woods as a hint to prefer paths. Both of these items are surprisingly easy to edit on OSM.
aloisdg 6y ago
I love to see that you rely a lot on open source. Using OSM instead of gmaps is a big plus in my list. Do you also plan to open source it?
baq 6y ago
very cool! i live close to a forest and it found a trail i had to manually tune on komoot. feature request: an option to not cross country borders would be nice.
3guk 6y ago
Thanks for creating this, just tried it in my local area and it generated a route that I already enjoy !! I shall no doubt get a lot of use out of this, whilst it’s not the intended use - I will cycle a few of the routes over the next few weeks !
sicromoft 6y ago
This is really well done. If you use this, please consider donating. (I'm not affiliated in any way, I just saw on the about page that it's self funded and costs $200/mo). Here's the patreon page: https://www.patreon.com/trailrouter https://www.patreon.com/trailrouter
danpalmer 6y ago
This is fantastic. Tried it where I live and the 5km and 10km routes were very similar to where I actually run for those distances, the only major differences being local paths that I know of which are poorly represented in available data. One improvement I might suggest, it’s not clear if this is being done already, is to not just bias towards greenery, but also boa against main roads. The routes generated for me spent a long time on roads that are quite major, where there are nicer alternatives available.
subpixel 6y ago
As a runner who only runs on trails (e.g. not on pavement) I make a point of asking other runners about places to run before I visit a new town. I tend to get great advice and the benefit is that I often meet people to follow on Strava, where I build up a library of potential runs. I’m not looking forward to a future where every conceivable off-road trail is available, instantly, in an app. I doubt anyone who appreciates nature really is.
sandos 6y ago
Id want this but for bicycles.
jamgraham 6y ago
AllTrails has a free trail creation tool. Check it out here, you just need to create a free account to save. https://www.alltrails.com/explore/map/new https://www.alltrails.com/explore/map/new

402 points by samcrawford 6y ago

Author here. Trail Router is a running route planner that prefers greenery and nature in the routes it generates, and biases against busy roads. It can generate round-trip routes that meet a specified distance, as well as point-to-point routes. I've written a detailed blog post about how Trail Router works here: https://trailrouter.com/blog/how-trail-router-works/ https://trailrouter.com/blog/how-trail-router-works/ I developed this because I am (or was...) a frequent traveller for work, and I like to run wherever I visit. But I don't enjoy running on busy main roads, and I found that without careful and time consuming route planning that is often what would end up happening if I didn't know the area. Trail Router is my solution to this problem. After a previous discussion (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23177351 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23177351) received quite a lot of attention, dang reached out to suggest I post a Show HN to reach a wider audience. I've addressed some of the original feedback too - for example, you can now prefer hills in your routes, as well as avoid them.

pj_mukh 6y ago
We sorely need this for cycling. Komoot is the closest thing but it doesn’t do mileage requests like your app here. This is awesome! EDIT: In addition to optimizing for green routes, optimizing for low speed car zones would be a killer feature.
- samcrawford 6y ago
  Thanks! Cycling is on the to-do list. But I'm conscious it probably wouldn't just be a single category - there would need to be separation for road cycling and mountain biking. The routing algorithm does already prefer roads with low speed limits, but there is definitely more that could be done in this space (e.g. a slider to set a preference to avoid higher speed roads). It also depends on the availability of speed limit data (I use the OpenStreetMap database).
  - nickswan 6y ago
    You could almost do with a ‘how safe you felt’ rating for each road. Would obviously take a while to build up the data.
  - 076ae80a-3c97-4 6y ago
    The state of apps/web apps for planning road cycling routes is abysmal. If you can implement this you'll immediately be the best.
    - cullenking 6y ago
      I am curious why you think this. I run https://ridewithgps.com https://ridewithgps.com and always love constructive feedback to improve. There’s always improvements to make, but I wouldn’t quite go as far as calling things abysmal!
    - goguy 6y ago
      The new Strava feature is pretty good IMO
    - malyk 6y ago
      footpath is pretty great for planning and adding features regularly
    - c0nsumer 6y ago
      One of the main reasons for this is a lack of data. The Strava Heatmap (crowdsourced data, based on past frequency of use) is pretty much the best. OSM tagging is insufficient for real good routing, and it doesn't take traffic patterns into account. Thus, a lot of route creation is dependent on hyperlocal knowledge. Strava Route Builder, with the heatmap, goes fairly far on this, but it too isn't the best. This is a really hard problem to solve.
  - pistoriusp 6y ago
    I frequently do 50km - 60km cycling routes from my home and I've manually figured out the greenest and least busiest routes. I tested it with your app and the route is near identical to what I've figured (over the course of several thousand km's of trial an error). I'm amazed! Edit: I'm usually on a mountain bike.
- donjoe 6y ago
  cycle.travel does have a feature for mileage requests. It is not very much optimized for dirt routes though...
  - Doctor_Fegg 6y ago
    Thanks for the recommendation - cycle.travel’s my site! I’d like to do a dirt/gravel profile. Main reason I haven’t so far is that it’s very hardware-intensive (as in tipping over into renting another Hetzner box).
    - donjoe 6y ago
      Man thanks so much for your work! Been using it for some time now especially for planning long distance routes. That's where cycle.travel really shines (plus I really love the 3D altitude visualization ;-)). I usually tend to export routes and navigate with komoot. Komoot for long distance planning is terribly slow as soon as you hit ~200km+.
      - karussell 6y ago
        I just wanted to reply this cannot be as Komoot is also using CH (fast routing algorithm using GraphHopper) but yes, they are relative slow for fast routes. The reason seems that they create a very big response (5MB) in these cases and then it takes more seconds to visualize this. For current & original GraphHopper the response is highly optimized and so it is much smaller (20x) even with comparable road data (like elevation, surface, bridges/tunnels and road class) btw: in general Komoot is a nicely polished app. I can only recommend it :)
        donjoe 6y ago
        I absolutely agree. Routing using a phone is loads of fun. I do have the paid version and I highly appreciate their open source-ish character. Besides large response data and a slaggish planning interface @ komoot: try routing from northern Italy to Sicily: Komoot doesn't seem to know the ferry departing in Villa s. Giovanni to Messina. Komoot will always - no matter how may vias you place - route you back north and send you on a ferry in Salerno. Yes, I know, I could split my route and such. Yet, I love the idea of my planning tool to show me the complete route - including official transportation ;-)
- rorykoehler 6y ago
  Komoot does mileage requests. I use it nearly every ride.
- stugrey 6y ago
  Maybe check out Huli who are working on exactly this amongst other things https://huli.life/ https://huli.life/
  - notatoad 6y ago
    this actually looks pretty cool, but if i'm being honest i just want to use it because they had the guts to call their company hooli.
  - efrecon 6y ago
    huli looks promising, but they just have cycling right now. It's a no go for long(ish) runners.
- mvkel 6y ago
  This already exists! It’s an app called EasyRoute
tijuco2 6y ago
Mountain biker here. Google used to have a great app that was able to record the trails I went to. After that, I could share with my friends and they could do the same circuit just following the directions given by the app. That was a great way to discover and explore new routes. Like everything that works, google canceled the project. If you add this option, I can guarantee at least 20 news users to your platform.
lfuller 6y ago
This is actually a wonderful product - thanks for making it! I've looked for a website that did this for a long time, and this works surprisingly well. It actually produced a route that is very similar to one I found myself.
karussell 6y ago
The blog post provides a lot of insights. Good read. Some questions. Do you plan to support area routing? And you write: "However, the good news ended there: Openrouteservice does not publish the code for calculating this green index". Is your code publicly available and allows "the news to end good" ;) and maybe even integrated elsewhere?
- samcrawford 6y ago
  Area routing is definitely a topic of interest. It looks like it's still a topic of discussion too: https://github.com/graphhopper/graphhopper/issues/82 https://github.com/graphhopper/graphhopper/issues/82. Maybe it's something I can help with in the future. Good point RE the green index calculation. The very least I could do would be to upstream a reference implementation and documentation back to Openrouteservice. I will take care of that.
runnr_az 6y ago
Super cool... this is definitely a thing I’ll use
Schweigi 6y ago
Wow, great project. I was working on exactly this in 2015 using Grasshopper but never finished it. I like how much time you invested to solve all the tiny details around the edge cases. Like prefering certain streets, no-hills and trying not to run the same street twice. It wasn’t clear to me from the blog article, does prefer “green” also prefer water areas?
- samcrawford 6y ago
  Thanks! Yes, the "greenery" preference also prefers water.
  - fouc 6y ago
    It would be nice if the water preference could be adjusted in preferences perhaps.
    - samcrawford 6y ago
      Thanks, I'll consider breaking those two things out separately.
cullenking 6y ago
Hey Sam, I run ridewithgps.com and have been reaching into the guts of graphhopper to do interesting routing stuff as well. We just silently rolled out popularity based routing, where we used our database of 50mm rides to build a popularity graph which is used to add a popularity weight in routing decisions. Got a long pipeline of other projects coming out in the same space. Drop me a line if you ever want to yack about these things! cullen@ridewithgps.com
- TrueGeek 6y ago
  Are you guys considering adding in more social features to compete with Strava? It’s seems an excellent opportunity right now with so many people upset with them. A simple UI update showing a feed, add a kudos system... you’re halfway there.
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
  - cullenking 6y ago
    That's actually one of our main focuses over the next two months, along with mapping and routing improvements. We've seen a decent uptick in people migrating, and they are asking for more social stuff. We've always been shy about becoming a social network, so our focus is on making it much easier to connect with people you know, see what they are doing, while making it optional and not pushing it too hard to our existing users.
- cullenking 6y ago
  Reply to my own reply to say, I forgot to mention this is really cool, and a fun use of OSM data I hadn't thought of before. Nice work!
- samcrawford 6y ago
  I certainly will, thanks! And congratulations on all your success with Ride with GPS. I'm not really a cyclist, so I only used it for the first time last night, but it looked and worked great for me.
def8cefe 6y ago
Have you considered creating an option to generate the closest all-nature route (not factoring in walking distance to the running route which you could use as a warm-up)? Very neat app.
- samcrawford 6y ago
  Nice idea - consider it added to the potential todo list for the future. Thanks!
nathancahill 6y ago
Wow! I tried several different length runs, ever single one _perfectly_ matched some of my favorite routes. Shockingly good.
c0nsumer 6y ago
Thank you for doing this. For years I've contributed trail data to OpenStreetMap, mostly to support mountain biking, but this is the exact kind of other project it benefits. It was really neat being able to try this on local trails and see just what happens. One question: What tags does it give priority to? I ask because I tried it on a local trail system, and it seemed to prefer the wide paved and dirt path as opposed to the mountain bike trail. It was weird in that sometimes it'd use the single track, but in others it'd do sort of an awkward thing through the parking lot / service road (highway=service, service=parking_aisle) then use some of the single track (eg markers 1-2) before jumping on the paved path and pretty much ignoring the single track. The single track is really popular with trail runners in this park, so it got me wondering. An example of that is here: https://trailrouter.com/#wps=42.65195,-83.05484%7C42.65088,-83.05339%7C42.64784,-83.05312%7C42.64737,-83.04981%7C42.64361,-83.05201%7C42.64295,-83.04860%7C42.63185,-83.04142%7C42.63607,-83.04381%7C42.65195,-83.05484&ss=&rt=true&td=10000&aus=false&aus2=false&ah=0&ar=true&pga=0.8&im=true https://trailrouter.com/#wps=42.65195,-83.05484%7C42.65088,-...
- samcrawford 6y ago
  Thanks for all your contributions to OSM! If you ignore all of the greenery preference then it gives priority to tags: foot=designated route=root, hiking highway=footway, path, track, bridleway, pedestrian, living_street, residential, service, unclassified maxspeed < 20km/h Looking at your area (https://www.openstreetmap.org/way/191828180#map=15/42.6423/-83.0444 https://www.openstreetmap.org/way/191828180#map=15/42.6423/-...), all of the trails are given equal preference. As a result, it then falls back to whichever gives the shortest path. It's choosing the asphalt one (linked above) just because it's the shortest path. In the future, I may add a surface preference option - so you could give additional preference to non-paved paths.
  - c0nsumer 6y ago
    Thank you very much for explaining that. That makes a lot of sense. I really wish there was a better way for tagging things like narrow/twisty natural surface trails vs. wide flat ones, but that seems all balled up in US vs. EU hiking things, MTB tagging... It's a mess. (Making it worse, someone naively editing a mountain bike trail in iD will end up inadvertently flagging it as highway=cycleway. And then people using OSM for cycling directions get routed down an MTB trail... Yay.)
ddoeth 6y ago
I think there might be a bug, check this out: https://imgur.com/a/DXhMWxG https://imgur.com/a/DXhMWxG I know for a fact that the second one is about right, because I ran it already. The first one however is somehow showing "shorter" kilometers, by the end it should be about 2.5km. Did I do something wrong?
- samcrawford 6y ago
  The first one is an "out-and-back" (so it goes out 2>3>4>5, and then back 5>4>3>2).
  - ddoeth 6y ago
    Is there any way too see this? Because for both I selected Round trip. Also the first kilometer seems way too short in comparison to the second Edit: Wait, the numbers are not every kilometer, right?
    - samcrawford 6y ago
      There's no easy way to see it at the moment, other than looking at the waypoint list (the box at the top left). One idea I'm looking at is putting arrows on the line - so in this case you'd see arrows going both ways on the line. And yes, the numbers do not represent km, they represent the numbered waypoints listed in the top left box. Any usability suggestions are very much welcome!
      - ddoeth 6y ago
        Thanks, yes. I think it would be nice to have some kind of range indication, maybe the waypoints could be letters so they don't get confusing? And then you can toggle distance measurements. And for the direction problem, maybe a change of color every kilometer or a gradient? Although that might also be confusing.

lostpixel 6y ago

Looks interesting! Have you considered providing a way to sync routes directly to Running watches?

samcrawford 6y ago
I actually have. Watch this space - there should be direct route syncing to Garmin and Suunto before terribly long. In the meantime, you can export routes to GPX/KML files already.

dang 6y ago

This project was discussed in the "quarantine side project" mega-thread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23177351 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23177351. Since people were interested, we invited Sam to repost it.

caiobegotti 6y ago

Wow, I'm actually impressed by how good the results were, I was not honestly expecting it! Lots of kudos! From the clean map interface and Strava heatmaps to defaulting to metric units, this is something I would even pay for!

samcrawford 6y ago
Quick anecdote... It defaulted to metric units globally when I first launched it ~8 months ago. But that quickly resulted in complaints from North American users, so it now defaults to imperial units in North America and metric everywhere else. Users can change it in the settings menu, of course. Thanks for the kind words!
sqs 6y ago
Yes, I was very impressed with the quality of the routes it generates. I live near Muir Woods (north of San Francisco), and it picked some great ones for me.

chrisdalke 6y ago

Nice job, the algorithm is really effective! I tried this in multiple cities where it ended up recommending very similar routes to some of my established running routes, and even some new combinations :) Love that your algorithm tries to exclude out-and-backs, I think that goes a long way to make the routes feel organic and appeal to runners. This is really polished and I wish you the best! One feature suggestion: I wonder if you could have a flag to generate routes starting in parking lots/park entrances in a radius around the starting location. This could go a long way to recommend some common long-run routes where you need to travel a brief distance via car or public transportation but then can get 10-20 miles entirely in the woods.

samcrawford 6y ago
Thanks! The avoidance of out-and-backs was a must-have for me. It can definitely be improved though. For example, right now the algorithm tries to avoid traversing the same path twice, but it will happily use a path that is only a few metres away! So adding some buffer around that (to penalise paths that are close to one already taken, if not the same) is a future bit of work. Your suggestion is a nice one. Here in the UK, where it's common to have trains connecting most towns and larger areas, I have thought about adding the ability to say "I want to run 20 miles, and finish at a train station that can get me home in under an hour". Assuming the user is using a car makes it more easily achievable though. Consider it on the todo list!
- mtnGoat 6y ago
  wait, it avoids out-and-backs? could have fooled me, all the routes it showed for my house were out and backs, some had multiple points of out and back(like a letter Y or E)... i guess thats why i hate running near home, everything is an out and back and even the computer cant find an alternative. :)
  - samcrawford 6y ago
    It tries to! But if there's no good way to avoid them, then it will end up taking them anyway. More specifically, when 'avoid repetition' is enabled (it is by default), then the routing algorithm has a very significant penalty weight applied to any existing path already taken.

steven_pack 6y ago

Nice job! Two clicks on my phone and first route was spot on.

knownhoot 6y ago

this is AMAZING! very fast and planned some interesting routes in Portland that I hadn't thought of. I think i'll start using this over my premium strava route planner

jack_riminton 6y ago

This is really well done, congrats. I love the level of automation to make it so easy to use. Also the attention to UX, not just in the narrow UI sense but the actual experience of the trail. Some thoughts: - Create a community out of it so that people can rate the routes, and therefore provide feedback for the algo? - Use some google streetview or alternative for landmarks along the way so people remember what they should be seeing and don't get lost?

samcrawford 6y ago
UI/UX is most definitely not my forte, so I appreciate the kind words! Your suggestion RE landmarks tallies with an issue I've been grappling with: how does a user actually run with the route that they've just planned? Yes, you can export the route to a GPX file, and some users will use that on watches/apps to guide them, but it's a bit clunky and isn't the kind of thing you'd necessarily do for a short 5km run in a new area. I'd rather avoid building full run tracking functionality, as it'd just be repeating what so many other apps do (and often very well). Perhaps the answer is to enable easy syncing of the route to your other apps. Strangely, Strava (the most popular) don't allow importing of routes via their API.
- benjaminl 6y ago
  I was think the same thing. The routes generated are really great, but how would I actually use the routes. As some of the routes are pretty complicated. I use an Apple Watch and it would be great to use that. My preference would be to use Apple Map directions. But it isn’t possible to specify waypoints. But the official Google Maps URL spec supports specifying waypoints. It would be awesome to click on a link to open the route in Google Maps for turn-by-turn directions. https://developers.google.com/maps/documentation/urls/guide#directions-action https://developers.google.com/maps/documentation/urls/guide#...
- Doctor_Fegg 6y ago
  Garmin have an import API (I’m just setting it up with cycle.travel). I’ve suggested an “open this URL to get a polyline” intent to the Osmand devs and they’ve built it but I’m not convinced it’s live yet.

js2 6y ago

Ha, it makes the same route planning mistake I did years ago when I was in Rome. I was staying near the Colosseum and for one of my runs, thought I’d run on the Appia Antica, because oldest road in the world, into Parco della Caffarella because it looked like a really nice park with lots of trails. Well, next thing I know I’m running down a one-way cobblestone road with cars coming toward me and there’s no entrance into the park because there’s a huge wall between the road and the park. The road had walls on both sides in fact. I didn't want to turn around because I’d have the cars to my back. So I hugged that wall as close as I could and trusted the shit out of Roman drivers. Eventually I found a way into the park. Here’s the route Trail Router gave me: • https://ibb.co/k8m18xq https://ibb.co/k8m18xq Here's the run I did that day: • https://ibb.co/pK6xqMX https://ibb.co/pK6xqMX The road starts out looking great: • https://ibb.co/998GQk3 https://ibb.co/998GQk3 (my picture) • https://ibb.co/DYXkBt5 https://ibb.co/DYXkBt5 (google maps) But very soon you're on this: • https://ibb.co/vJcCSXr https://ibb.co/vJcCSXr (google maps) Well, it was all worth it because eventually I got into the park and I'm still alive: • https://ibb.co/52VgT1W https://ibb.co/52VgT1W • https://ibb.co/dbvG6f5 https://ibb.co/dbvG6f5 • https://ibb.co/ZTPknP3 https://ibb.co/ZTPknP3 • https://ibb.co/VWxrwnB https://ibb.co/VWxrwnB I know you're at the mercy of map data. I don't know how unique this situation is. I always appreciate a new route planning tool. I usually use a combination of Footpath Route Planner, the heat maps from Strava, and Google Maps street view and satellite view. It's definitely a pain to do that for every trip. Maps are definitely not optimized for pedestrian safety, and things like sidewalks and shoulder-width are often inaccurate or just not there on the maps short of bringing up street view.

samcrawford 6y ago
Thanks for the feedback, appreciated. The reason it suggested that route was (1) the park, as you found, and (2) the Via Francigena hiking route (https://www.viefrancigene.org/en/ https://www.viefrancigene.org/en/ & https://www.openstreetmap.org/relation/6201614 https://www.openstreetmap.org/relation/6201614) follows this road. One item for consideration in the future is allowing users to flag unsafe portions of a route and then having that visible to other users (and also influence the algorithm).
- 6y ago

JimDabell 6y ago

It seems to work well for my location. I have been living in my current home for six months and I’ve made an effort to plan out greener routes around me for various distances. Trail Router comes up with similar routes when I put those distances in. It’s not perfect – it seems to prefer joining up parks that are long distances away from one another as long as there’s a river along the route instead of joining up parks that are closer together. But it’s a lot better than I expected.

codingdave 6y ago

I live in a small town that is getting grown over by suburbia. The routes ignore all the nice open farm fields to the east of me, and runs me down the busiest streets through some of the most dangerous intersections in my entire state, just to skim by the edge of a park in the city. In that same 6 mile distance, in addition to running past the farms, it could have run me up to the base of the mountains, down the nice bike trail that goes through groves of trees and open field, then back home. This is one reason I love testing apps like this - my town almost always messes them up.

samcrawford 6y ago
Would you mind sharing the name of your town? Feel free to email me directly if you wish, contact details are in my profile. It could be that OpenStreetMap data (which I use extensively in the algorithm) isn't very detailed for your area, but I'm keen to investigate further.
- codingdave 6y ago
  I don't mind sharing the town - Spanish Fork, UT 84660 Especially check out the east side of town, it seems like it wants to go into town for anything short of a 15 mile loop, whereas going east is far more natural.
  - samcrawford 6y ago
    It's not finding any green 'features' in the vicinity (I know, the mountain range off to the east would beg to differ...), so it's falling back to guessing a direction in which to head. I can see that the Uinta-Wasatch-Cache National Forest is tagged properly in OpenStreetMap though (https://www.openstreetmap.org/relation/3502235 https://www.openstreetmap.org/relation/3502235), so this should be something I'm able to improve on. Thanks again for your feedback!

yachtman 6y ago

Major fail, I live like two blocks from one of the most beautiful and popular lush and quiet rail trails in the country and is perfect for running and even has mile markers for runners and instead of taking me there it took me through an incredibly busy shopping complex and over an interstate to a nearby park that's not running friendly

jack_riminton 6y ago
I wondered how long it’d take for a snarky, overly critical comment. So you tried one route and by this anecdotal evidence you’ve deemed it a “Major fail”. No constructive criticism on how to improve the app, no positive comments on anything at all. In other words, you’re a dick
- dang 6y ago
  Please don't respond to a bad comment with an even worse one. That just makes things even worse, and is exactly what the site guidelines ask you not to do: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
  - jack_riminton 6y ago
    Apologies for the angry response
samcrawford 6y ago
Sorry to hear that. If you could share your approximate location, then I'll gladly investigate.
- yachtman 6y ago
  Sure thing. I won't here as that would be violating TOS for site
dang 6y ago
This comment breaks the Show HN guidelines: https://news.ycombinator.com/showhn.html https://news.ycombinator.com/showhn.html and arguably the site guidelines also: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html It's great to give helpful feedback about bugs, but please edit out swipes like "Major fail" when doing so. They're especially noxious when someone's presenting their own work. We want people do to that freely on HN, and get helpful feedback, not internet nastiness.

voisin 6y ago

Is there a way to show the elevation associated with a route?

samcrawford 6y ago
Yes - click on the little up arrow in the mile/km distance box at the bottom of the screen. It will show you elevation, as well as the type of paths taken.

hobofan 6y ago

Looks very nice! Just started out running and especially the feature that it outputs multiple routes of similar lengths (which I can slowly increase) to have some variation is very appealing! From what I can see the routes all look very runnable with a lot of greenery.

etrautmann 6y ago

This is an amazing tool, I just downloaded the app and am excited to use it routinely. Thank you!

saeranv 6y ago

This is great. I move around a lot, and one of the big headaches I always have is figuring out a decent route to run. The only thing I would request is having an option to have completely circular routes, rather then having routes that require running back the way you came.

annoyingnoob 6y ago

Looks interesting. It missed the multi-use trail that wraps around the area where I live - though its not on google maps either.

samcrawford 6y ago
It may be that the trail near you isn't on OpenStreetMap (https://openstreetmap.org https://openstreetmap.org). If you're interested in fixing that (and thus the myriad of tools that rely on OpenStreetMap data), head to https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Getting_Involved https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Getting_Involved

christiansakai 6y ago

This gonna be a hit!

ganstyles 6y ago

This is cool! Strava has a new feature where they'll plan a route for you: give a mileage range and a starting spot. When you tell Strava to prioritize trails vs paved, you get good results. Interesting very similar to yours, so that's really impressive given they're a large company with a big budget, or perhaps it says more about my location.

e15ctr0n 6y ago

Love the idea. Great blog posts as well. This one alone https://trailrouter.com/blog/how-trail-router-works/ https://trailrouter.com/blog/how-trail-router-works/ would have taken you several hours to write!

rosstex 6y ago
Hours? I would stress for a day on that! Bravo.

seattle_spring 6y ago

This is really fantastic. Thanks for making this! One suggestion: Have changes to the route push state to the history. That way you can use the back button on the browser if you make a mistake. Right now it'll totally take you off of the page.

samcrawford 6y ago
Thanks very much! Personally I find it a little annoying if a site pushes state to the history very frequently. If I genuinely want to get off the site I end up clicking back loads, and then go too far! I tried to solve this in Trail Router by putting an undo button on the screen (bottom right).
- seattle_spring 6y ago
  I would just follow how Google Maps works. I think that's how my brain was expecting Trail Router to work, since it visually and functionally is very similar to using the "Directions" feature of GMaps.

WD-42 6y ago

Nice work! I tried it out for my local area and it ended up suggesting some routes that are very similar to my existing runs/rides.

ak217 6y ago

This is awesome! I've tried it on a few areas that I know well, and it really did a good job. I really love running in new places as a way to explore my area as well as when I travel. I find there is something profoundly good about connecting with my surroundings that way. I use Strava Route Planner with the heatmap extensively, and now I think I'll be consulting this a lot. My only suggestion is to show an elevation profile. There is already a hill preference slider in the settings, but the elevation profile would really make it great to look at.

samcrawford 6y ago
You're in luck, both of those things are already supported! For viewing the elevation profile, click on the little up arrow on the miles/km distance box at the bottom of the screen. You can configure a hills preference (either to prefer them or to avoid them) in the settings screen. Click on the cog icon to get there. More details are available at https://trailrouter.com/blog/greenery-and-hills-sliders/ https://trailrouter.com/blog/greenery-and-hills-sliders/

egypturnash 6y ago

I am looking at the route it is generating from my place in New Orleans and comparing it against my own mental route generator for cycling and it’s not doing so well. It’s got me running parallel to Jeff Davis Parkway instead of taking the trail along the very green parkway, then up the side of Bayou St. John with the least greenery (one side has a lot, the other has next to none). Maybe in part because the unofficial desire trails up the green side of the bayou that I regularly see joggers on don’t seem to exist on the map. Going though City Park makes sense; coming back I guess Cortez isn’t too bad a choice if “avoid repetition” is on, but avoiding Jeff Davis just seems super weird.

handol 6y ago

How often is the map data refreshed? If I submit an update to OSM, is there a way to verify that my changeset has made it to trail router?

charliebrownau 6y ago

Uses Apple CDN Wouldnt it be better to add to openstreet map

jwineinger 6y ago

I just loaded this and the map was centered on my house before I gave access to my location. I'm using current Firefox. Anyone know how that would happen?

samcrawford 6y ago
It uses geoIP data from Maxmind to approximately locate users even before they provide location information. It's not usually _that_ accurate though. It's just intended to get a user to the rough location that they're based in.

jordwest 6y ago

Wow. As soon as I gave it my location it plotted my favourite local return hike, very cool!

ogre_codes 6y ago

This is pretty cool, but there are definitely routes that pop up quickly that cross closed gates and trails that are not in good repair. I'd consider these to be good "Beta" routes, if you enjoy exploring and don't mind the occasional dead-end, but not super reliable if your time is limited. Not a complaint, if I ran these are the sort of routes I'd love to explore.

samcrawford 6y ago
That's very fair, thanks. In cities I wouldn't consider this to be much of an issue as an occasional dead end (e.g. road works) is easily manually avoided. But in more rural locations it can be frustrating. If you're seeing it in your area, then you could consider submitting a correction to OpenStreetMap. It's surprisingly easy to do. I update Trail Router with the latest OSM data roughly once per month.

necovek 6y ago

Pretty neat! I did see a problem with stairs — not sure if algorithm does not take into consideration or if data is not properly marked up in OpenStreetMap, but locally, it recommended a route goong over two long sets of stairs: one of them being practically a goat trail I would recommend against running on, but careful trodding is ok. The other stairs are long and wide, so probably not perfect for running (hard to figure out your stride), but ok. I wonder if elevation rate could be taken into account, which would probably exclude the goat trail one.

samcrawford 6y ago
Steps are supported in OSM, but I don't know if your ones in particular are tagged. Either way, Trail Router doesn't consider them by default. If there is a lot of elevation gain/loss when using the stairs, you can adjust the Hill Preference slider (in the settings screen) to indicate whether you prefer hills or would rather avoid them. You can read more about that here: https://trailrouter.com/blog/greenery-and-hills-sliders/ https://trailrouter.com/blog/greenery-and-hills-sliders/

senden9 6y ago

I tried to generate a 10km round trip route. It generated exactly the same route that I run normally :D

tinus_hn 6y ago

It’s quite amazing these days there’s enough free data and software available you can create such a tool on your own! How do you plan to make it pay the server costs though?

samcrawford 6y ago
Fully agreed - the amount of data openly available is astounding. I think many people would be surprised at the richness of the tagging information within OpenStreetMap. Without OpenStreetMap, this project and countless others would not be possible. Mapping costs would be by far the biggest one. However, I'm very lucky that after the last big spike in traffic, Mapbox very generously admitted me to their community programme. You can read more about that here: https://trailrouter.com/blog/mapbox-community-programme/ https://trailrouter.com/blog/mapbox-community-programme/ The server costs are quite modest at the moment (under $200/mo), which I'm lucky enough to be able to self-fund through my other work. If usage were to massively increase then maybe I'd need to find a way recoup costs. But even all of the hits from HN have barely put a dent in the server utilisation, so there's plenty of headroom for the foreseeable future.

wjnc 6y ago

Love the idea especially for when on holidays or in another town! I live I a very green environment and the maps generated are quite often 'wrong', that is not even near the routes I would suggest. Preferring urban areas to non-urban areas and seemingly not knowing of major walking paths in the forests nearby. The Strava map seems to know those paths, but OSM probably doesn't. Anybody know where I can dive deeper in OSM to find out what's going on? An example: my neighborhood is surrounded by a free laying cycling and walking path. Perhaps diametrically only 30m-100m from houses, but 100% green and rustic. Then the mapper plots a route on sidewalks in urban areas. It did recognize the no. 1 park around though. But I'd hope it would get the woods as well.

samcrawford 6y ago
Thanks! My suggestion would to start out by checking out your area on openstreetmap.org for two things: Firstly to check to see if the trail you refer to is shown (it should show up as a yellow dashed line if it's a trail). Secondly to see if the woods are shown (this should show in a light green shaded area). Trail Router uses the presence of woods as a hint to prefer paths. Both of these items are surprisingly easy to edit on OSM.

aloisdg 6y ago

I love to see that you rely a lot on open source. Using OSM instead of gmaps is a big plus in my list. Do you also plan to open source it?

baq 6y ago

very cool! i live close to a forest and it found a trail i had to manually tune on komoot. feature request: an option to not cross country borders would be nice.

3guk 6y ago

Thanks for creating this, just tried it in my local area and it generated a route that I already enjoy !! I shall no doubt get a lot of use out of this, whilst it’s not the intended use - I will cycle a few of the routes over the next few weeks !

sicromoft 6y ago

This is really well done. If you use this, please consider donating. (I'm not affiliated in any way, I just saw on the about page that it's self funded and costs $200/mo). Here's the patreon page: https://www.patreon.com/trailrouter https://www.patreon.com/trailrouter

danpalmer 6y ago

This is fantastic. Tried it where I live and the 5km and 10km routes were very similar to where I actually run for those distances, the only major differences being local paths that I know of which are poorly represented in available data. One improvement I might suggest, it’s not clear if this is being done already, is to not just bias towards greenery, but also boa against main roads. The routes generated for me spent a long time on roads that are quite major, where there are nicer alternatives available.

subpixel 6y ago

As a runner who only runs on trails (e.g. not on pavement) I make a point of asking other runners about places to run before I visit a new town. I tend to get great advice and the benefit is that I often meet people to follow on Strava, where I build up a library of potential runs. I’m not looking forward to a future where every conceivable off-road trail is available, instantly, in an app. I doubt anyone who appreciates nature really is.

sandos 6y ago

Id want this but for bicycles.

jamgraham 6y ago

AllTrails has a free trail creation tool. Check it out here, you just need to create a free account to save. https://www.alltrails.com/explore/map/new https://www.alltrails.com/explore/map/new