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Cycling Tips - Route Planning
If you are deterred from cycling by the heavy traffic on the main roads in your area, then think again - you just need to do a bit of route planning! There are plenty of quieter roads, paths and parks that you can use to avoid the busiest of roads. Read on for some advice on how to plan your route.
Paper Maps
Go Bike has teamed up with Spokes Maps to produce the Glasgow Cycle Map. This shows not only cycle routes throughout Glasgow, but also many quieter roads that can be used to get around parts of the city that are not directly served by cycle routes. For further information see Glasgow Cycle Map.
Ordnance Survey is the national mapping agency of the British Government. On the 1:50000 "Landranger" maps, if you wish to avoid busy traffic, you should look for yellow roads in the countryside (minor but tarred) as your preferred type of road. Green roads (Trunk roads) should be avoided unless they have special provision for cyclists (which will be shown with green dots marking a cycle route), and red (A roads) and sometimes orange roads (B roads) can also be quite busy. Blue roads are motorways, and are forbidden for cycling. White roads can sometimes be all right for cycling, but the quality will vary greatly, and can often be very rough. They may also not be a right of way and pass through private property. A line across a road indicates a gate, including ones that you may not be able to open. Marked paths can also vary greatly in surface quality, so unless they are marked as a cycle route, do not rely on these being useable. Steps are not marked. In towns, yellow roads indicate unclassified through routes, while white roads will almost certainly be tarred.
Some private companies also produce maps. These are often aimed more towards the road map market, i.e. longer distance motoring, although there are some good local street maps available. Sustrans produces maps of the National Cycle Network routes.
In the countryside there are often minor roads, serving farms and little else, that will provide quiet routes for cycling. Roads often get replaced by new high-speed roads, and if the old road is not dug up or breached by the new road, it can make an excellent route for cycling. In urban areas look for side streets parallel to the main road you would otherwise have taken, and if there are are gaps between streets, look for any paths linking the side streets together. However, using a paper map alone may not be enough...
Online Resources
There are various online resources that can be used to help with route planning.
Streetmap has, unsurprisingly, street maps, as well as Ordnance Survey 1:25000 "Explorer" and 1:50000 "Landranger" maps, and road maps. Like many other similar maps, the street maps on this site only show streets and roads, and do not show paths or footbridges. The Ordnance Survey maps do show some footpaths, but many are missing.
Flashearth has aerial photography, with sufficient clarity to make out road markings. Roads, paths, pedestrian crossings, and anything that isn't under cover will show up. However, roads and paths in woodlands and underneath flyovers or in a tunnel may be hidden. Full screen coverage makes this a top site. In the search box, put ", UK" after your town name, since the default country is elsewhere in the world.
Multimap has "Bird's Eye" aerial photography, where the landscape has been photographed looking diagonally downwards, from four directions, allowing better penetration of woodlands, especially since some of the photography has been done in winter. This is also useful for seeing underpasses and anything underneath bridges, and gradients and steps show up better than in standard aerial photography. The site also has standard aerial photography, and street, road and Ordnance Survey maps.
Google Maps also has maps and aerial photography, but beware of bogus street names! The most useful tool here is "Street View", which consists of photographs taken by Google from street level. Useful for detailed views of streets, also for checking gradients, checking signs (e.g. for restrictions such as banned turns and one-way streets), looking down the ends of paths to see what the surface is like, searching for bike parking stands, and generally being nosy! Coverage now extends to the whole of the United Kingdom and is surprisingly comprehensive, with most minor streets covered in addition to the main roads.
Any of the aerial photography sites will give you an idea of how busy a road is likely to be, but bear in mind that each photograph is a snapshot of how the road looked at a particular moment in time, and this may be influenced by the time of day, day of the week, and even major events. Aerial photography is also good for locating paths and footbridges that may not be marked on street maps, particularly online street maps which tend to mark only roads.
Council websites often have detailed mapping available, and this may also include details of Core Paths, which are the main paths in each area. However, coverage varies from council to council, and crossing a council boundary is a no-no! Paths for All is looking into a more co-ordinated approach to mapping Core Paths online.
Cycle Route Mapping
Sustrans has detailed coverage of cycle routes superimposed onto Ordnance Survey maps on its online mapping. All National Cycle Network routes are shown, but council cycle routes are only shown where the council has contacted Sustrans to let them know about the routes, which doesn't always happen. Some of the routes shown on the Sustrans mapping are not actually signed, notably the Glasgow City Council "Fit for Life" routes.
Various councils produce maps and leaflets of cycle routes, some of which are available to download online. See the Routes & Maps section for details.
User Generated Content
There are also various websites detailing suggested routes for cycling. These often feature routes submitted by actual cyclists, but the drawback is these routes are unlikely to be vetted, so could be of varying quality, illegal, wrongly mapped, or just impossible to follow. For instance, one site features a route involving crossing a motorway near Bishopton without the aid of a bridge! Check the routes out yourself, using the resources above, before setting out. See the Routes & Maps section for a list.