On a cycle tour, I want to get to know a region. The old town centre belongs to the route as much as the path by the river or the detour to a lake. A federal road may be faster. That does not automatically make it the better choice for a journey.
A router can compare length, gradient, surface and road class. Whether a detour is worthwhile is much harder to derive from those data points.
der-hipster.de is an old domain I bought and then never used. While I was working on Viberide, someone said: “The hipster only rides cycle routes.” The sentence stayed with me.
It became a map of named and signposted cycle routes. The planner considers those routes instead of always finding only the shortest connection.
The division of work resembles Blogbox. The software sorted articles; we decided which sources entered the app. Cycle routes raise the same question for me: What can the computer do, and what should people have selected first?
What makes a good route
Municipalities, tourism organisations and cycling clubs have planned many local signposted routes. They know the quiet side road, the useful crossing and the place where a break is worthwhile. That knowledge is embedded in a route's path.
After several days on the road, I do not want to be sent past an interesting place at the last moment.
A signposted route is not automatically good. Paths change, data becomes outdated and not every tourist loop fits every ride. Its course is still a useful signal for a router.
What the router does with it
On der-hipster.de, you set a start, a destination and a type of bicycle. The router checks three alternatives. Its touring-bike profile gives official cycle routes more weight. Road bike and mountain bike profiles have different priorities.
After the calculation, the page shows distance, travel time, elevation gain and an elevation profile. It compares the track with the cycle-route network and lists both the share on official routes and the routes used in order. You can download the track as GPX or share it with a URL.
The router does not have to follow a signposted line everywhere. It can leave the route where that makes sense for the selected ride.
The finished track therefore does not come from the computer alone. Where it fits, it follows paths that someone local has chosen.
For longer journeys
The planner also builds routes for multi-day trips. Someone cycling from Lake Constance to the North Sea will not find one cycleway covering the whole journey. The router has to connect several long-distance routes and close the gaps between them.
Over such a distance, a few additional kilometres often matter little. Many signposted routes were laid out so there is more to see on the way.
I also find it relaxing to follow signs on a long tour. When the signs are good, I can look at the map less often. I cannot rely on them completely: signs disappear or are difficult to spot.
The website does not need live navigation for this. A finished GPX track can be loaded onto a Garmin, Wahoo or phone. With Viberide, I can ride these routes offline on iPhone and Apple Watch.
An archive of cycle routes
Alongside the planner, the website is an archive. It contains more than 15,000 named or numbered cycle routes from many countries. I deliberately filter out small relations under five kilometres.
Clicking a line opens a dedicated route page with the information I want before a trip:
- the complete GPX track,
- distance, elevation gain and elevation profile,
- course, places and connections,
- surface, traffic and signage where those data are available.
OpenStreetMap is the foundation. Cycle routes are stored as relations: groups of paths with a name, number, network and sometimes further information. Long routes are often split across several sub-relations. Names vary slightly, elevation is missing and surface data is incomplete.
The Bodensee–Königssee cycle route, for example, consists of several sections in the data. A script joins them, calculates the track and adds a profile from terrain data. Wikipedia, Wikidata and official route pages help with the course, stages and background. Each page lists its sources.
Most of this is created automatically. An archive of this size would be difficult to build any other way. Where data is missing, the website says so.
Planning rather than navigation
Viberide is an app for the road. der-hipster.de is for planning before the tour. You can find a route and inspect its data without an account or installation.
The map uses MapLibre. Route lines come from custom OpenStreetMap vector tiles. A dedicated BRouter server with three adapted bicycle profiles performs the route calculation.
What is still missing
The planner and archive work worldwide. The depth of data varies. Some routes have a clear number, good path data and detailed sources. Others currently consist of only a name and a line.
The generator can produce tracks, elevation profiles and metadata. It does not know whether a path is pleasant today, whether the signs are still correct or whether a detour is truly worthwhile. The route pages must not pretend that someone has checked every kilometre.
In the end, I want a route that is good to ride and lets me see something along the way.