Route Planning which is more accurate | GTAMotorcycle.com

Route Planning which is more accurate

sburns

Well-known member
So I am fooling around in Basecamp, Harley route planner, and google maps. For fun I put in my location (Scarb) to Tobermory.
They all come back with the same route and distance 311 km, but each one is a little different as to how much time it will take to get there.
Google is 3hr36min
Basecamp 4hr30min (quite a difference)
HD Planner 4hr10min (same issue as above)

If I go with Google I will save an hour of riding! Ya.

But which is more accurate as this difference is quite impactful.
I would think Google is as they constantly updating. I have done this route and 3 hr etc seems correct.
Just surprised at the other results, which one should I use to judge or plan something out for longer route if they are off this much?

GTAM input needed!
 
google is useless for trying to get an accurate time on long days
one example was my last day coming north back from the Gulf Coast
Louisville KY to Chatham ON....google called it 6.5 hours
with traffic, 3 gas stops and lunch is was over a 10 hour day
on a 3 week trip I'd say google was underestimating the time by at least 2 hours/day
I suppose it's okay for trips of just an hour or 2 though

I use Tyre for long routes, seems better as it's coded for bikes
send the route to the TomTom and it does it's calculation thing
spits out an extremely accurate timeline for the day
 
Basecamp allows you to adjust your average speed per road type so it can be more reflective of your time required.

However I find Google to be pretty close to my pace as the gas and rest stops are averaged out my faster than speed limit pace.
 
I believe Google maps would show you the drive/ride time under ideal conditions ( no traffic ) at the posted speed limit. It does not take into account traffic, construction, fuel/washroom/coffee stops.
Not sure about the other route planners.
I just enjoy the ride and use Google for a guesstimate time

On a side note; If you are staying in Tobermory, make sure you have reservations as they are very busy this time of year, especially weekends.
AND if your going to Manitoulin, be very watchful for deer. Very high deer population up there.
 
Being able to download a large region on Gmap is good but find it spotty when it goes off grid.

Still like my TomTom app and it's realtime arrive at is reasonable.
 
If traffic is a possibility, I find Waze set for your expected time of departure to be quite accurate. I haven't done a long enough trip with it that I hit multiple rush hours in a single journey, so I'm not sure if it accurately deals with that but that isn't applicable to your trip.

When I used to use garmin software, I set my speeds to 20 km over posted highway limits and 10 km/h over city street limits for more accurate predictions (I normally go 20 over but garmin didn't appropriately account for stop signs and traffic lights).
 
I use BaseCamp for all my routing and love the program, been using it for years. I find it is pretty accurate. Now things can change when you have traffic and construction which BaseCamp does not have access to being offline routing software which I am fine with. Depending on your Garmin you might have access to traffic and weather. Mine will give me options to route around traffic on a trip and show me the time lost based on construction and how much I can save by taking an alternate route. I will view my routes in Google Earth but never use it to actually plot a trip so cannot compare. Just know from my experience BaseCamp is pretty accurate and I would go with that.

I just did a test like you and plotted in BaseCamp and Google Earth and indeed Google Earth shows it being an hour shorter while appearing to be the exact same route. Personally my money is on BaseCamp.
 
Very interesting. Waze is 3.5 hours if you leave at midnight (ie. no traffic), and closer to 4 hours if you leave at 08:00 (ie. with traffic). I've always found their times to be quite accurate, it's interesting that you have found a route with such a huge variation between algorithms. Just do the ride and let us know how long it takes :).

Tobermory is in the greater GTA isn't it? You could hold the photo tag torch for a bit.
 
@wonderings I have played around in basecamp it is a interesting concept. But the search is terrible at finding stuff. If I have to put my field of veiw over the area to search, to me this is pointless. This trips me up all the time in there. Whereas GM never fails, I could be viewing a map of Toronto and search for something in South America and it does it. Basecamp, the POI's are quite small, I may have missed a setting for that.

@GreyGhost I think I have the torch already =)

I may have been lucky to find a route with differences between programs. Hopefully that is a 1 off and I can go ahead. I think I will just proceed with the Harley route planner. I like the simplicity of it and it shows the relevant POIs for touring, like gas, food, lodging, very predominately with out zooming in and out all the time, and it till has other interesting points along the routes, but less pronounced.

BTW I have done this route and it was closer to 3.5 hours.
 
Any planning software that doesn't take into consideration historic traffic patterns is pretty much guessing on time estimates, or is just doing distance by speed calculations without taking anything else into consideration.

Google is good in that it does take into consideration current traffic, but not so much historic traffic from what I can see.

Waze on the other hand takes into consideration current traffic plus historic traffic patterns so barring anything unexpected along your route (unplanned construction or an accident) it's time estimates tend to be freakishly accurate, and I've probably driven or rode using Waze for somewhere in the range of 300,000-500,000KM with it running. I was an early adopter and have used it consistently ever since.

Try Furkot.

Yes... very much yes. If you can hack the learning curve, it's awesome for the planning part of long multi stop trips. I still use Waze for the navigation part ultimately.
 
@wonderings I have played around in basecamp it is a interesting concept. But the search is terrible at finding stuff. If I have to put my field of veiw over the area to search, to me this is pointless. This trips me up all the time in there. Whereas GM never fails, I could be viewing a map of Toronto and search for something in South America and it does it. Basecamp, the POI's are quite small, I may have missed a setting for that.

I agree that is one thing it could use improvement on. When I am plotting a trip I zoom in to a certain region where I want to stop and do my search from there. You do not have to be zoomed in crazy close, pretty much just needs to be on the screen. Not sure if there is a setting to fix that but never really paid much attention to it as I normally am looking around where I want to search anyways.

I wonder if it has to do with all those POI's actually loaded on the computer and needing to be searched, there are millions, opposed to google having it all in the cloud and over servers for a faster search.
 
I agree that is one thing it could use improvement on. When I am plotting a trip I zoom in to a certain region where I want to stop and do my search from there. You do not have to be zoomed in crazy close, pretty much just needs to be on the screen. Not sure if there is a setting to fix that but never really paid much attention to it as I normally am looking around where I want to search anyways.

I wonder if it has to do with all those POI's actually loaded on the computer and needing to be searched, there are millions, opposed to google having it all in the cloud and over servers for a faster search.

Agreed and I don't get it either. I think the underlining concept is different then the usual conventions we are now use to in say googlemaps, which of course works well and is simple. Plus I am sure Google has more resources to figure this out and make it work well.

Yesterday I was doing a trip in Basecamp using the trip planner assistant. So I wanted to add Sault Ste Marie to my day. It could not find it. So I zoomed right over the area, STILL could not find the Canadian city, found the US one. Then cancelled and searched again then nothing came up. I figured out you needed to add it as a HUB....WTF seriously.

There must be some underlining reasons for this but it does not create a useful user experience. It seems to me they need to do a complete re-write of the program and drop everything and all these old methods.
 
Agreed and I don't get it either. I think the underlining concept is different then the usual conventions we are now use to in say googlemaps, which of course works well and is simple. Plus I am sure Google has more resources to figure this out and make it work well.

Yesterday I was doing a trip in Basecamp using the trip planner assistant. So I wanted to add Sault Ste Marie to my day. It could not find it. So I zoomed right over the area, STILL could not find the Canadian city, found the US one. Then cancelled and searched again then nothing came up. I figured out you needed to add it as a HUB....WTF seriously.

There must be some underlining reasons for this but it does not create a useful user experience. It seems to me they need to do a complete re-write of the program and drop everything and all these old methods.

Something is going wonky on your end. I did a search for "Sault Ste Marie city" and it was top of the list and I was not zoomed in at all. My zoom level was exactly as you see it in the screen shot.
Screen Shot 2018-07-25 at 1.32.10 PM by B P, on Flickr


BaseCamp makes sense for plotting with ease. Furkot and others while people love them make zero sense to me. If I need a long tutorial on how to use it I move on. BaseCamp I figured out on my own and never had any issues.

One thing you could try if you are just looking for cities is select what your POI is searching for. So if you are looking for Sault Ste Marie you will not get everything that has that in the name but only cities with that name
Screen Shot 2018-07-25 at 1.31.29 PM by B P, on Flickr

Screen Shot 2018-07-25 at 1.36.00 PM by B P, on Flickr
 
Furkot and others while people love them make zero sense to me.

While Furkot can be a bear for actual planning because it s full featured ...the Motorcycle Roads resource make it worth at least getting that far.

The routes are pulled from all the major sources and many have the GPX links available for plug and play.
 
Something is going wonky on your end. I did a search for "Sault Ste Marie city" and it was top of the list and I was not zoomed in at all. My zoom level was exactly as you see it in the screen shot.
Screen Shot 2018-07-25 at 1.32.10 PM by B P, on Flickr


BaseCamp makes sense for plotting with ease. Furkot and others while people love them make zero sense to me. If I need a long tutorial on how to use it I move on. BaseCamp I figured out on my own and never had any issues.

One thing you could try if you are just looking for cities is select what your POI is searching for. So if you are looking for Sault Ste Marie you will not get everything that has that in the name but only cities with that name
Screen Shot 2018-07-25 at 1.31.29 PM by B P, on Flickr

It probably works like you describe, searching the map with nothing going on. Right now I am using the trip planning assistant when I tried to add a waypoint (or I thought a waypoint, or another destination to the day) it could not find the city. I believe this is how is should work, as you can add the city as a "hub" instead. Once I get finished with the trip planner assistant I'll try the search again.

Anyhow it probably is BC weird way of doing things.
 
While Furkot can be a bear for actual planning because it s full featured ...the Motorcycle Roads resource make it worth at least getting that far.

The routes are pulled from all the major sources and many have the GPX links available for plug and play.

I usually just google search the area I am going, or the entire state. There is a site that has tons of user generated routes with comments. Download the GPX and just drop it in basecamp and adjust as necessary.

I have tried to furkot a few times but ended up giving up as I could to figure out a basic route. Also no offline routing available with anything other than BaseCamp as far as I know. I prefer being able to route and not be dependant on my net access.

Found some good ones with this site
http://www.motorcycleroads.com
 
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It probably works like you describe, searching the map with nothing going on. Right now I am using the trip planning assistant when I tried to add a waypoint (or I thought a waypoint, or another destination to the day) it could not find the city. I believe this is how is should work, as you can add the city as a "hub" instead. Once I get finished with the trip planner assistant I'll try the search again.

Anyhow it probably is BC weird way of doing things.


I have never used the trip planning assistant so can't help you there.

Is there a reason you are using that over simply creating a route by saving your points and just dropping them in order and adjusting the route if need be after?
 
I have never used the trip planning assistant so can't help you there.

Is there a reason you are using that over simply creating a route by saving your points and just dropping them in order and adjusting the route if need be after?

Mostly to just explore the program and test out how features work. Also I am planning a multi day route. I rather not do 1 giant route with no idea of how many Ks or hours per day. The trip planner does divide it up for you by day and gives you a total Ks. I am sure alternatively I could do multiple routes on my own but thought I would try this out.
 
Mostly to just explore the program and test out how features work. Also I am planning a multi day route. I rather not do 1 giant route with no idea of how many Ks or hours per day. The trip planner does divide it up for you by day and gives you a total Ks. I am sure alternatively I could do multiple routes on my own but thought I would try this out.

Will have to check that feature out. I just eye ball it and plot out each day of the trip individually and then see the length and time and then adjust if need be. I find it easier to keep organized. I also regularly change the routes during the trip if I find something new or hear of something I want to check out so like to have each day done individually.
 

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