Bicycle routing (MTB)

Overview

Bicycle routing take into account factors such as the availability of bike paths, trails, and roads that are safe and legal for bicyclists, as well as other factors such as elevation differences and, for example, pedestrian crosswalks. Bicycle routing can also be useful for mountain biking. By default the fastest route is provided.

You can configure Bicycle routing in the Route parameters section of the Navigation settings.

Route parameters - Bicycle

OsmAnd's bicycle routing features allows cyclists to input a start and end point, and then generate a route that takes into account their preferences and local geography.

Android

iOS

Parameter	Description	Note
Fastest route	The routing mechanism will choose more direct and, accordingly, faster roads.	Despite the increase in the speed of movement, the distance traveled also increases at the same time. This leads to an increase in muscle effort.
Riding style (Android) Driving style (iOS)	You can choose your riding style for a better routing.	Prefer byways (will be preferred less busy roads with tags secondary and residential) Prefer unpaved roads Balanced (this option is something in between prefer byways and shortest route) Shorter routes (for routing will be preferred wider and usually busier roads, providing faster routes)
Avoid roads…	Select roads you want to avoid during navigation.	You can either select a road on the map or choose road type(s) from the list: No unpaved roads No border crossings (Avoid crossing a border into another country) No ferries (a type of water transportation, that carries vehicles across bodies of water) No stairs Avoid cobblestone Avoid fords (parts of a highway where a waterway runs over it) Avoid tunnels No sett Avoid footways
Allow private access	Private access restrictions will be ignored when route calculating.	Tag private is used in OSM to describe restrictions on the use of highways and other transportation routes, as well as buildings, entrances, amenities, and leisure entities.
Use elevation data (Android) Preferred terrain (iOS)	Elevation data will be used in route calculation: penalties for roads with another elevation profile will be set.	This preference can help avoid steep hills or vice versa, prefer them. If you choose hilly route, preference will be given to hills and mountains. If flat - to flats, hills will be avoided. Less hilly preference is something in between these two options. Without elevation data the fastest route as on plain terrain will be calculated.

Other routing settings:

• The routing algorithm can take into account temporary limitations specified in OpenStreetMap. This can be done by using Consider temporary limitations option. Note that in some cases, information from OSM can be outdated.
• In the Recalculate route section of the Route parameters, you can enable and adjust route recalculation options.
• Default speed (Android) or Road speeds (iOS) should be set according to your vehicle parameters. They are used for the unknown roads without speed limits. Mostly it happens, if you navigate by track or online routing.
• In the Development section of the Route parameters (Android only), you can try new routing features, that are under testing now. Note, that these settings are only available when the OsmAnd development plugin is enabled.

MTB routing particularities

The MTB (mountain biking) routing mechanism is the same as bicycle routing. Note, that there are some penalties for using MTB routes, and therefore they are less likely to be offered for cycling to home or to work.