Motorcycles and quad bikes in planner
Answered
Currently we need to select Gravel Bike to plan routes on trails that are perfectly usable with motorcycles and quad bikes. While this works, it's not intuitive, so adding more types would attract more users!
The same question
Maybe to add, you can always make a custom profile for planning where you allow offroad paths to be included. Those are typically the offroad paths which are legal to ride or drive.
I also use the 'gravel roads' occasionally when planning routes and typically this is needed for sections that are either not strictly legal or where it is not completely clear if they are legal.
Some examples: In Slovakia, the gravel road from Chlebnice to Male Borove is, as far as I know, legal to drive/ride and you can route over it with a car profile allowing for offroad. From Chlebnice to Malatina is technically not legal (can be seen on Google maps), but routing is possible. From Malatina to Bukovina I'm not sure, but I'll be able to tell you in a week or two :)
Sometimes, it's the other way around, for example the road up from Kral'ova studna cannot be routed with a car profile, even if it is a surfaced road (with toll). Similarly, in Croatia's Velebit mountains, many trails such as the one from Jadovno via the memorial all the way to Uzelci are perfecly legal trail to ride (and great fun on a motorcycle, a quad would not fit) but they cannot be routed with a car profile.
As long as you use Locus to navigate, there is no problem. With classical navigation devices, such as Garmin Zumo or Tomtom, or BMW's own Connectedride system, you cannot navigate trails if the devices think that they are illegal to ride on. I'd say that's their flaw, not Locus' flaw :)
Unfortunately, in many countries offroad riding is forbidden. A great source of allowed tracks are the TET routes. These also often require the 'gravel bike' profile to work, but that is simply because the surface of the tracks is often not suitable for cars or even for road bikes (or adventure bikes on pure road tires).
Maybe to add, you can always make a custom profile for planning where you allow offroad paths to be included. Those are typically the offroad paths which are legal to ride or drive.
I also use the 'gravel roads' occasionally when planning routes and typically this is needed for sections that are either not strictly legal or where it is not completely clear if they are legal.
Some examples: In Slovakia, the gravel road from Chlebnice to Male Borove is, as far as I know, legal to drive/ride and you can route over it with a car profile allowing for offroad. From Chlebnice to Malatina is technically not legal (can be seen on Google maps), but routing is possible. From Malatina to Bukovina I'm not sure, but I'll be able to tell you in a week or two :)
Sometimes, it's the other way around, for example the road up from Kral'ova studna cannot be routed with a car profile, even if it is a surfaced road (with toll). Similarly, in Croatia's Velebit mountains, many trails such as the one from Jadovno via the memorial all the way to Uzelci are perfecly legal trail to ride (and great fun on a motorcycle, a quad would not fit) but they cannot be routed with a car profile.
As long as you use Locus to navigate, there is no problem. With classical navigation devices, such as Garmin Zumo or Tomtom, or BMW's own Connectedride system, you cannot navigate trails if the devices think that they are illegal to ride on. I'd say that's their flaw, not Locus' flaw :)
Unfortunately, in many countries offroad riding is forbidden. A great source of allowed tracks are the TET routes. These also often require the 'gravel bike' profile to work, but that is simply because the surface of the tracks is often not suitable for cars or even for road bikes (or adventure bikes on pure road tires).
Hi Guntars,
Thanks for the suggestion and for sharing how you're currently working around it — it's good to know the Gravel Bike profile gets you most of the way there.
You're right that we have a sizeable community of motorcyclists, quad riders, and 4x4 enthusiasts among our users, and we genuinely appreciate that. That said, our development focus has always been on non-motorized outdoor activities — hiking, cycling, running, ski touring, and similar — and that's where we put most of our effort when it comes to dedicated routing profiles.
There's also a practical reason we've been cautious about adding motorized off-road profiles: legal access for motor vehicles on unpaved tracks varies enormously from country to country, and in many places it's heavily restricted or outright prohibited on forest roads, field tracks, and protected areas. Those restrictions are often not consistently tagged in the OpenStreetMap data our routers rely on, which means a dedicated motorcycle or quad profile could quite easily send riders onto trails they're not legally allowed to use. That's a responsibility we don't take lightly, both toward our users and toward the landowners and natural environments involved.
For now, the Gravel Bike profile is a reasonable workaround in the web planner. If you'd like more control on Android, BRouter (our partner offline routing engine) supports fully custom profiles — riders in the community have built their own .brf files tuned for tracks and unpaved roads. It's a bit more hands-on, but it gives you a lot of flexibility.
Hi Guntars,
Thanks for the suggestion and for sharing how you're currently working around it — it's good to know the Gravel Bike profile gets you most of the way there.
You're right that we have a sizeable community of motorcyclists, quad riders, and 4x4 enthusiasts among our users, and we genuinely appreciate that. That said, our development focus has always been on non-motorized outdoor activities — hiking, cycling, running, ski touring, and similar — and that's where we put most of our effort when it comes to dedicated routing profiles.
There's also a practical reason we've been cautious about adding motorized off-road profiles: legal access for motor vehicles on unpaved tracks varies enormously from country to country, and in many places it's heavily restricted or outright prohibited on forest roads, field tracks, and protected areas. Those restrictions are often not consistently tagged in the OpenStreetMap data our routers rely on, which means a dedicated motorcycle or quad profile could quite easily send riders onto trails they're not legally allowed to use. That's a responsibility we don't take lightly, both toward our users and toward the landowners and natural environments involved.
For now, the Gravel Bike profile is a reasonable workaround in the web planner. If you'd like more control on Android, BRouter (our partner offline routing engine) supports fully custom profiles — riders in the community have built their own .brf files tuned for tracks and unpaved roads. It's a bit more hands-on, but it gives you a lot of flexibility.
Maybe to add, you can always make a custom profile for planning where you allow offroad paths to be included. Those are typically the offroad paths which are legal to ride or drive.
I also use the 'gravel roads' occasionally when planning routes and typically this is needed for sections that are either not strictly legal or where it is not completely clear if they are legal.
Some examples: In Slovakia, the gravel road from Chlebnice to Male Borove is, as far as I know, legal to drive/ride and you can route over it with a car profile allowing for offroad. From Chlebnice to Malatina is technically not legal (can be seen on Google maps), but routing is possible. From Malatina to Bukovina I'm not sure, but I'll be able to tell you in a week or two :)
Sometimes, it's the other way around, for example the road up from Kral'ova studna cannot be routed with a car profile, even if it is a surfaced road (with toll). Similarly, in Croatia's Velebit mountains, many trails such as the one from Jadovno via the memorial all the way to Uzelci are perfecly legal trail to ride (and great fun on a motorcycle, a quad would not fit) but they cannot be routed with a car profile.
As long as you use Locus to navigate, there is no problem. With classical navigation devices, such as Garmin Zumo or Tomtom, or BMW's own Connectedride system, you cannot navigate trails if the devices think that they are illegal to ride on. I'd say that's their flaw, not Locus' flaw :)
Unfortunately, in many countries offroad riding is forbidden. A great source of allowed tracks are the TET routes. These also often require the 'gravel bike' profile to work, but that is simply because the surface of the tracks is often not suitable for cars or even for road bikes (or adventure bikes on pure road tires).
Maybe to add, you can always make a custom profile for planning where you allow offroad paths to be included. Those are typically the offroad paths which are legal to ride or drive.
I also use the 'gravel roads' occasionally when planning routes and typically this is needed for sections that are either not strictly legal or where it is not completely clear if they are legal.
Some examples: In Slovakia, the gravel road from Chlebnice to Male Borove is, as far as I know, legal to drive/ride and you can route over it with a car profile allowing for offroad. From Chlebnice to Malatina is technically not legal (can be seen on Google maps), but routing is possible. From Malatina to Bukovina I'm not sure, but I'll be able to tell you in a week or two :)
Sometimes, it's the other way around, for example the road up from Kral'ova studna cannot be routed with a car profile, even if it is a surfaced road (with toll). Similarly, in Croatia's Velebit mountains, many trails such as the one from Jadovno via the memorial all the way to Uzelci are perfecly legal trail to ride (and great fun on a motorcycle, a quad would not fit) but they cannot be routed with a car profile.
As long as you use Locus to navigate, there is no problem. With classical navigation devices, such as Garmin Zumo or Tomtom, or BMW's own Connectedride system, you cannot navigate trails if the devices think that they are illegal to ride on. I'd say that's their flaw, not Locus' flaw :)
Unfortunately, in many countries offroad riding is forbidden. A great source of allowed tracks are the TET routes. These also often require the 'gravel bike' profile to work, but that is simply because the surface of the tracks is often not suitable for cars or even for road bikes (or adventure bikes on pure road tires).
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