Is there any route making software that show road types? I’m in an unfamiliar area with lots of rock roads that I’d like to avoid. Is there a trick to find out road types I’m not aware of?
As far as I know, Komoot shows the road surface, but I haven’t used it myself.
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You have to be a paying subscriber but the Strava route builder will show paved/unpaved.
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Strava Route planning lets you spec road types. No idea how accurate it is.
RidewithGPS which I much prefer, does not. Many of my long distance mapped routes using this service have taken me on gravel and dirt paths which adds an extra level of adventure for sure…
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Very satisfied with Komoot. Have planned ~4000km of different routes. Surface database have mistaken gravel for asphalt/paved road in ~10km. Only thing I miss compared to Garmin Connect courses is generating random routes with specified distance and general direction.
Komoot does show surfaces, but I find it really awkward compared to ride with gps for example to plan a route.
From what I can work out from my trial period is it is great if planning a point to point trip. The first thing when planning a route seems to be to state your destination and whether you want point to point or round trip. If you pick round trip it brings you back home basically the way you went and you have to the mess and move your route around by adding waypoints in. Maybe this is because I’m so used to RWGPS where you make the route up as you go along. Rarely do I make point to point journeys, nor do I think of a destination if wanting to make a loop. I generally have a distance/time in mind and want to plot away till a route comes together and this doesn’t feel intuitive with Komoot. Anyone any advice on using komoot whilst I’m still in my trial period?
You’re right, Komoot is lacking in this department. Didn’t bother me, I have already created ~30 routes with roughly 20km distance increments with Garmin Connect random courses generator (30km to 320km) and exported those to Komoot for road surface checking. All the courses cover my outdoor workout needs and other rides are usually with specific destination in mind.
I had no idea! I’ve just been using Garmin to do my routes, and never bothered to look into strava’s even though I pay for it.
Thanks for the heads up!
Strava’s surface definitions can range from good to “not so good”. It’s better than anything else available but a good test is to map out some roads you know that are paved and unpaved to see what it shows. They have paved, dirt and unknown. My experience is that “unknown” category is 50/50 paved/dirt. Not sure where you are located but if you are looking to avoid or find gravel roads you can try www.gravelmap.com. It is crowd sourced info so some areas are really good and others don’t have much.
I was playing around with it last night and it seems to be hit or miss. It marks the state highway near me as unknown, so that’s fun.
The fact that you can’t import a GPX file into the Strava system to check road status really sucks and is plain stupid. Heck, you can’t even convert a ride you did into a Strava route…
But my most recent 3 miles of gravel that RideWithGPS took me on is identified as “Not Paved” in Strava. That would have been nice to, um, avoid.
Cool! Hat tip sir…
Now teach me how to import a GPX so I can see if any of the roads are non-paved in advance and you get something better than a hat tip. 
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Beer for you!
Unfortunately, I tried that and it keeps returning an error. Maybe my GPX file was too large since it was a 400K route I was trying.
Edit: Error with a 100K route as well. Weird. You still get a beer. I’ll go open it now. Will find something to do with it if you’re not here in the next five…
Never tried it myself. Last week in my feed I saw a couple of rides that looked interesting and converted to routes. Was really happy to see the gravel sections clearly marked. Have been using RWGPS for years and it looks like Strava has pulled ahead on that feature.
Hey cujo,
You can try Locus-sh which provides the route planner with road types.
At least in Mexico Kommot is useless for road types. I planned my first route yesterday - of approx 60 km it listed about 8 as unpaved. Within the first 15 kms which were supposedly paved, more than half was dirt/rock. At km 15 the road was due to continue for another 25 kms and was all dirt and gravel (komoot said paved, locals said not). I changed my route and took a national highway which i had been trying to avoid. The day before I tried google maps and it sent me down a dirt road that ended at a fence. My only advice, stick to numbered roads and/or use satellite view to check pavement.