There exists non-profit, crowd sourced, website which contains a shockingly robust map of gravel roads.
As of this writing the website contains 700,000 miles unpaved segments across six continents with tens of thousands of contributors adding to the database each month.
There are two ways to check if your desired road segment has gravel.
a) interactively by using hamburger menu item “map+” / “map search” /
or
b) direct to url of the format
https://gravelmap.com/map#_=<zoom>/<gps1>/<gps2>
where
“zoom” is a number 6 - 22 [I use 13 as my default value]
“gps1” is the first figure in a decimal gps coordinate
“gps2” is the second figure in a decimal gps coordinate
for both gps1 and 2 you may supply whatever level of decimal accuracy you have/know and but website will round to 5 decimals if you supply more than 5
for example let us assume the gps coordinates of interest are:
40.5939125, -81.9986964
If you surf to the above URL you will discover that center of map is our point on route 320. The map clearly shows that 320 is NOT gravel there exists several nearby roads which ARE gravel.
This thread is a request for kurviger to be able to call gravelmap
the vision is to be able to “right” click on road segment of a route being developed and have the website use the GPS coordinates of that right-click and have kurviger create a call to gravel map…
Here is a screen capture of the above URL call.
the intent of this request is to add additional tools to check if a road segment is gravel. Typically I use “google” to see if the point of interest has a “google street view” if it does then one can pull up the images to view the road conditions at time time the photo was taken. When a road does not have a “street view” then I use google satalite and zoom in as tight as I can, quite often one can see the “painted” lines on road which is proof it is paved. Sometimes like in the example above the road IS paved but it is not PAINTED (in this example the road does have a street view).
Das ist ja eine tolle Seite, kannte ich noch nicht. Sehr hilfreich für Offroad-Fahrer! Allerdings scheint sie allgemein in Deutschland nicht so bekannt zu sein. Die Holländer, Belgier und Dänen sind dagegen schon sehr aktiv!
Google StreetView ist in Deutschland leider nicht sehr erfolgreich gewesen (“german Angst”) und es sieht diesbezüglich ziemlich mau aus.
That’s a great site, I didn’t know it yet. Very helpful for off-road riders! However, it doesn’t seem to be so well known in Germany. The Dutch, Belgians and Danes, on the other hand, are already very active!
Google StreetView has unfortunately not been very successful in Germany (“German Angst”) and things are looking pretty poor in this respect.
Thank you for the confirmation that gravelmap.com is more than just a USA phenomenon. Yes, the website was created for those that LIKE to create gravel routes and loops for their off-road capable bikes as well as learn of gravel road segments near their house to practice upon. But I find the site useful to identify roads I wish to avoid.
As for google street views - are you sure street views are not becoming pervasive in Germany? It is my understanding that in 2011 Germany privacy concerns “won” and for 12+ years (2011 to 2023) the streetview program was halted in Germany. But this changed sometime in 2023 and street views were allowed to be made once again.
That’s true - Google is probably working on it now. But we are still a long way from reaching the status of other countries, especially away from the cities:
Thanks for creating this discussion. In general we are open to add another link if this is helpful for enough people.
I am not sure how helpful the info from gravelmap would be? The map seems to be about bicycling and therefore they have a lot of bicycle trails, which depending on your location, might not be legal to use with a motorcycle. Besides legality, trails also might not be suitable for motorcycles. I checked a few locations in Europe and most were not legal to ride with a motorcycle.
With all that said, the map data that we use at Kurviger is from OpenStreetMap. It is possible to use the data from OSM to show gravel roads. We currently don’t do this. So this is not a great argument I know, but we do show unpaved parts of your route, where the data is set in OSM, if you have a Tourer subscription.
If you would also like to see a link to gravelmap, please let us know here in the thread. Please also double check the content form gravelmap and if that would be helpful or not.
Here is a real world example of how gravelmap proved its worth when all other tools left me without support.
Earlier this week I was creating a route to Mohican State Park.
Please zoom in on waypoint 9 of this map… https://kurv.gr/kuaqR
From here Kurviger would organically route us up Wally road to the finish line.
In doing due diligence to keep my club off gravel roads I questioned the validity of Wally rd.
I first brought up google street view but it has not traversed Wally rd
I then brought up google satellite view and in a tight zoom the painted lines of a paved road are present.
This brought joy to my heart.
However as you zoom the length of wally the paint disappears.
it remains unclear if road becomes a paved but unpainted road, or does road become gravel.
Now pull the GPS coordinates of waypoint 9 up on gravelmap.
My gosh. look at all the roads with color on them - including Wally.
gravelmap proved to me that Wally would be a poor choice for my club.
so what I did is I kept gravelmap up on one screen and kurviger on the other.
I then created a route from waypoint 9 to the finish which avoided the color roads of gravelmap.
This resulted in a deep “V” of waypoints.
Which was probably a good thing because I used that “V” as an excuse drop into town
for people to buy a picnic sandwich at “Subway” and/or top off gas before reaching the park.
@zaphod_42 I agree the display name was incorrect the entire route is not gravel. I knew that from the onset because I could see the painted lines on road in the initial segments. But on the bright side at least I was made aware there was an issue on that road.
I do feel I need a major education training lesson.
How did you get Kurviger to show that line segment in brown? it does not do this for me
I tried to exactly duplicate your route and it does not do that for me.
here is a link to my attempt to duplicate your effort as well as a screen capture of that this link looks on my end.
I would like to be as cool as you and also see brown road segments where gravel exists.
Thank you, that was the education training I needed, I too now get the same brown line you obtained.
as for gravelmap, the website still has value as another source to verify/check if a road has gravel.
Using this same area as our real world example please reference
and examine the road segment between waystop 10 and 11
per kurviger route information this road is segment is NOT brown
however the same segment in gravelmap is correctly colors this road segment as gravel
Like in our other examples google streetview has not traversed these roads and a tight zoom of satellite makes me think the areas in red-oval are gravel with the rectangular-enclosed segment and un-painted asphalt.
the assumption that 211 is a gravel road is further bolstered by looking at the street view of 211 on the right side of road, one can see the loose gravel.
I think we can agree there does not exist one source of truth on how to Identify a gravel road.
which leaves us in a state where the kurviger user (route planner) needs to check multiple sources to confirm a route is likely to be gravel free.
The tools a route planner can check seem to be:
OSM
Google street view
Google satellite tight zoom
gravelmap
I think the above example shows that gravelmap would concretely (and correctly) tell a route planner to NOT use 211 and conversely stated a route planner using just OSM and google Street View/satellite might gamble (and lose) that 211 between way stop 10 and 11 was a valid gravel free choice.
Yes, just one more to add is Mapillary, they are an alternative to Google street view, but have a lower coverage of roads, but since it’s community data, you never know, it really depends on the area. They are linked from Kurviger as well.
