Cycle MapsHow the city lists are made
Every city page is made the same way, from the routes mapped in OpenStreetMap and found through Waymarked Trails. This page says how, so each city page can keep to its own rides.
Popular rides
For each city, Cycle Maps chooses up to 4 rides it is known for — river and canal paths, park loops, routes out to the country — among the cycling routes mapped in OpenStreetMap. A ride that is not mapped as a cycling route, such as a walking path that people also cycle, is not listed. Nobody's rides are counted: “popular” means chosen by hand, not measured.
The other tracks
A search asks Waymarked Trails for the named routes in a square 16 km either side of the city's centre, looks at up to 24 of them, local ones first, cycling and mountain-bike in turn, and lists those that pass within 16 km of the centre, longest first. This is the search the app makes around a point on its map. Tracks longer than 150 km are not listed, and neither are tracks without a name or mapped with gaps; a city's page also leaves out tracks shorter than 1 km and a second track with the name of one already listed. Where there are more routes than are looked at, some are left out; each city page says how many there are.
Long-distance routes
Up to 6 regional, national and international routes of 50 km or more that pass within 16 km of the centre are named as well, widest network first; a section of a route already named, and a city's own network of local routes, are not. Their lengths and climbs are for the whole route; they link to Waymarked Trails, which shows all of it.
Lengths and climbs
A length is measured along the mapped line, except for a long-distance route that states its own. A climb is the one OpenStreetMap's mappers tagged, where they did. Otherwise it is estimated from a model of the height of the ground, the Copernicus DEM GLO-90, read every 30 m along the track, smoothed over about 450 m, counting rises of 10 m or more in whichever direction climbs more, to the nearest 10 m; such climbs say “about”, or “almost flat” under 5 m. In a check of 8 routes near Lyon and Vienna whose climb mappers had tagged, 6 estimates came within 15% of it; the other 2 routes are mapped in both directions, so their lines, and climbs, are about twice their own. The model measures the top of whatever is on the ground, so a flat track between tall buildings can read a little hilly.
Maps and dates
On a city's map, each track is drawn with at most 120 of its points. A city's list is made again 30 days after it was made, and each page gives the day; routes added to OpenStreetMap since then appear when it is made again.
Credits
Track and map data © OpenStreetMap contributors, found through Waymarked Trails. Climbs estimated from Copernicus DEM GLO-90 © DLR e.V. 2010–2014 and © Airbus Defence and Space GmbH 2014–2018, provided under COPERNICUS by the European Union and ESA; all rights reserved.