Richard Fairhurst

This weekend I powered up a new, fast server to turbocharge placename searches and North America routing. Lots more features coming soon (including a new look for the website, just like that which recently debuted in the app). Thank you to all cycle.travel supporters and everyone who puts their trust in the site – you make it what it is!

🎉 One million routes!

The 1,000,000th route was saved on cycle.travel today – this lovely journey along the River Loire. Today also saw May 2026 tick over to be the busiest month on the site yet (with 4 days still to go!).

Fittingly it was on this exact same stretch I snapped this road sign in 2019… 🚴‍♀️🚴🚴‍♂️

What happened to Goat Maps? It was shaping up to be a really promising outdoor mapping app/site, from the original founders of GaiaGPS. But everything has gone quiet and it's disappeared from the App Store. https://www.goatmaps.com

This is lovely: a (fairly bare-bones) OSM-based consumer mapping app, with custom cartography in video game styles. (And routing by @osrm@en.osm.town!) https://mapshifter.com

I see what3words is passing round the begging bowl again. One address search per second is not that impressive for however many £m they've gobbled up to date. https://www.crowdcube.com/companies/what3words/pitches/qWkmPq [requires signin]

@slothrop@chaos.social The spoken announcements are meant to be English (or French!) for the translatable bits ("turn left", "cycleway", etc.) depending on your phone's locale, and an appropriately localised voice for the street names. So it might say (English) "turn left on" (French) "place de la Republique". It sounds like it's not selecting English correctly for the translatable bits - I'll see if I can work out why.

@slothrop@chaos.social That should only affect the language the map labels are displayed in. (I think!)

@slothrop@chaos.social Hmmm! What language is your phone set to, and where are you riding? Generally it tries to read street names in the appropriate language, but it should always say “cycleway” in English, so there’s something wrong there.

Just waved off Emrhys Barrell, founding editor of Canal Boat magazine, my old boss and someone from whom I learned a lot. (Fittingly, the route from the station to the crematorium was along the Kennet & Avon towpath.) Rest in peace, EGB.

@richlv@mastodon.social Motor traffic data ftw. cycle.travel uses it in many countries but admittedly not NL because the latter has so many bike paths, which I guess is @bart@floss.social ’s point!

@richlv@mastodon.social @bart@floss.social Here’s cycle.travel’s route. Curious for how it might be made better!

@heigit@mastodon.social You might want to add a proviso that you’re talking about _car_ routing - OSM is already best in class for responsible travel options like walking and cycling!

https://youtube.com/watch?v=E84qpllopjg

OpenStreetMap once again fulfilling Tony Wilson’s definition of praxis: "doing something, and then only afterwards, finding out why you did it" https://www.theverge.com/games/672035/openstreetmap-data-games