Mapsource and winter closure of alpine passes

Der Lustenauer

Guest
Mapsource has this annoying habit of routing me around certain passes in the alps when planing a route I might do in summer. I have to rubberband quite a lot to force it over the pass , I am just wondering if there might be a better method than rubberbanding or waypoints.
 
Der Lustenauer said:
Mapsource has this annoying habit of routing me around certain passes in the alps when planing a route I might do in summer. I have to rubberband quite a lot to force it over the pass , I am just wondering if there might be a better method than rubberbanding or waypoints.
I have never noticed this. I do a lot of route planning in the Alps.

Note that MapSource should be set to select the "shortest" route and vehicle type should be set to "Car/MC".
 
Der Lustenauer said:
Mapsource has this annoying habit of routing me around certain passes in the alps when planing a route I might do in summer. I have to rubberband quite a lot to force it over the pass , I am just wondering if there might be a better method than rubberbanding or waypoints.

Change the date on the GPS unit/computer to August
 
HMR said:
Note that MapSource should be set to select the "shortest" route and vehicle type should be set to "Car/MC".

This raises a question related to my Alpine tour at the end of June... If I set up Mapsource on my pc to use 'shortest routes', so as to encourage the route to follow alpine passes rather than make a deviation round them, does this mean I also need to have 'shortest route' as the preffered option on my Quest? I am concerned that when I download a route to the Quest, made in Mapsource with the 'shortest route', that when this route is transferred to the Quest, which is normally set on best route, it will reroute the original Mapsource route to the Quest settings and that I may end up not going over the Alpine passes I had originally planned. :(

Am I right to be concerned?

Peter
 
Let me give you 2 examples.
Albula Pass in Switzerland: try getting a route from Filisur to Samedan, shortest and quickest route is over the Albula Pass, but Albula Pass is only chosen if I set the preferences to either Bicycle or Pedestrian, Cars/Motorcycles are going a long way around.
Silvretta Hochalpenstrasse in Austria: try getting a route from Gaschurn to Mathon, same story than above (I know it is a toll road).

One of my first thoughts was as well to change the system clock. But that does not work.
(I am using CN 8 and the nwest Mapsource Version 6.10.2)
 
I have taken a great deal of time and trouble to come up with a route for my summer trip. This was originally done in Mapsource with City Select V7 I then made the schoolboy error of "investing" in an upgrade to City Navigator V8. This means that I have to recalculate my routes in either Mapsourse or my Quest before they will work resulting in a totally different route. Any Ideas?

Dave
 
Dellis said:
I'm on the same set up.

Dave

Would love you to try those mentioned 2 routes, maybee there is a connection. Have the earlier prescribed problem with CS 7 as well.
Sorry, have to take that back, the problem does not seem to appear in CS7, thought I had it in December once before I upgraded to CN8, but just did another test on Albula and Silvretta and it routed perfectly! Switching over to CN8, with the same route still activated but recalculated the route changed to the above. Note, I have not changed anything in preferences during this test, just switching over and recalculating.

Seems to me now as it has to do with CN8 only. St. Michael where are you in the hour of my need?
 
ampthill said:
This raises a question related to my Alpine tour at the end of June... If I set up Mapsource on my pc to use 'shortest routes', so as to encourage the route to follow alpine passes rather than make a deviation round them, does this mean I also need to have 'shortest route' as the preferred option on my Quest? I am concerned that when I download a route to the Quest, made in Mapsource with the 'shortest route', that when this route is transferred to the Quest, which is normally set on best route, it will reroute the original Mapsource route to the Quest settings and that I may end up not going over the Alpine passes I had originally planned. :(

Am I right to be concerned?

Peter

Shortest route is not always the best option for your purpose in my opinion, as, wherever there is a tunnel, it will take you through the tunnel. In some areas it might also be shorter to go around as opposed to going up and up and then down and down again, but that would probably be a rare occurrence.
As far as recalculating on the Quest goes, I never do it, I just leave the route as it is, but you make me thinking now what it may do if I stray of the route (as I do every now and then) and it is recalculating then. A waypoint on the pass itself would probably help to keep the route.
 
PM me your waypoints and the routing settings you are using and I'll see what comes up. IMO V7 is a better routing tool than V8 but this may be of some help

PanEuropean said:
Guys, I've just read this whole thread over, right from the top of page 1, and after thinking about the difficulties that folks have reported (that I personally have not encountered), I am wondering if perhaps people are not attempting to use the MapSource application in the simplest possible manner?

Here's how I do my route planning. Typically, I ride about 20,000 miles a year. This is divided up about equally (mileage-wise) between 3 to 5 day jaunts that are 1,500 or so miles total, and one huge summer tour that takes 4 to 6 weeks to complete and runs about 8,000 miles.

I start with Michelin maps, and I do all my planning on these, long before I even turn on the computer. Once I have a good idea of where I want to go (final destination), and where I want to pass through (interesting places on the way), I turn on the computer and do the following:

1) I create one route for each day. If it will be an exceptionally complex day - for example, riding mountain passes - I might create two routes, one for the morning and one for the afternoon. But, typically, one day = one route.

2) I begin by defining the start and end waypoint for that day, and then letting MapSource calculate the route for me. I'll do a little tiny bit of tweaking of the 'Routing Preferences' (EDIT menu, then PREFERENCES, then the ROUTING tab, then press the DRIVING SPEED button) to encourage MapSource to generate a route that conforms with the riding style I want to follow that day. For example, if it is a transit day - just hauling ass to get from A to B as fast as possible - then I change my 'Interstate Highways' riding speed from the default value of about 65 MPH up to the ridiculous value of 100 MPH, and set 'fastest route' as my routing criteria. This will ensure that MapSource will very heavily bias towards the motorways and A class roads. On the other hand, if I want to ride twisties and I don't want to see a single dual carriageway under any conditions, I will set my riding speed on 'Interstate Highways' to a ridiculously low value (e.g. 30 MPH), and continue to say I want the fastest route. This means that divided highways and controlled access highways are heavily discriminated against, unless there is no other way to cross a pass or valley, and the secondary roads (twisties) get used preferentially.

3) Next, I look at the route that MapSource generates, and I tweak it a little bit by using the 'rubber band' feature to pull the route through towns that I want to pass through. I don't bother with precision accuracy - for example, If I want to go from Newquay to Taunton by way of Barnstaple (in other words, follow the coastal road), I just drag the route line to Barnstaple and drop it there. If it then calculates the first half of the route the way I want it (Newqay to Barnstaple), but it sends me down A369 to Taunton, instead of along A39 (the coast road), I'll just drag the second half of the route to some dinky town that is slightly past halfway to Taunton on the A39. I don't care if it routes me right downtown in front of the post office or cenotaph or whatever the exact center of that city is - hell, I'll bypass the city when I get there, and as soon as I pass abeam the middle of it, my GPSR will recalculate the route to get me to my final destination of Taunton. What I am trying to say is this: DON'T try to map your route out with millimeter precision, otherwise, you'll waste time and probably go blind at the computer.

4) Once I have the route laid out, looking more or less the way I want it, I save that file (that window), and I upload it to the GPSR. I then open a NEW window (a new .gdb file) for the next day's route. This is so that I don't screw up how one route got calculated if I tweak the routing preference around when I calculate the next day's route.

5) If there are certain places that I really, really want to see in or near a town (for example, let's say there is a pole dancer of international repute performing at some sleazy dive along the way), then I'll look it up on the GPSR the day I am riding, using the 'find POI' feature. Or, I might look the POI up in MapSource, and save it to my GPSR as a stand-alone waypoint, and when I start to get close to it (say, within 20 miles), I'll just ask my GPSR to take me directly to that place. After I leave, I'll just re-activate my planned route. I might not be on it, but the GPSR will automatically provide me with guidance to re-intercept that route once I start riding.

Everyone approaches tasks in a different way, and everyone strategizes and plans in a different way. MapSource is a very powerful application, but as all of us know, it can be quite complex, if we dive into it too deeply. I try to do the job as simply as I can, and not spend more than 5 minutes (at the most!) generating a route that I will spend a whole day riding. If it takes more than 5 minutes to lay out the route, then I know I am being too granular in terms of what I am trying to define with MapSource.

Hope this gives you some food for thought.

Michael

Illustration 1 - How MapSource proposed the route from origin to destination.


Illustration 2 - showing the first 'tweak' I made, rubber-banding the route up to Barnstaple.


Illustration 3 - with one more tweak - pulling the route line to somewhere just past halfway to Taunton - I think I will get the results I want...


Illustration 4 - yep, that worked, here's the final route.
If I decide later I want to pass through Ilfracombe (dead north of Barnstaple) - heck, I'll turn left at the sign that says Ilfracombe,
and my GPSR will eventually figure out that I have decided to improvise along the way.

 
Another example, this time with pictures

One of my local favourites, the Furka Joch, just a bit south of Lake Constance.

• the 1st picture shows my preference settings (they are the same on each picture),
• the 2nd what City SelectV7 suggests as shortest distance (Furka Joch! Exactly what I expect),
• the 3rd what City NavigatorV8 does with the same input (note, I just switch the map and recalculate),
• the 4th the first tweaking attempt to Bad Laterns (the barrier which closes the road is about 200 m after that)
• and the 5th the final route over the Furka Joch after another tweak (but if I would click just a little bit further to the right, the result would be different and I would have to tweak again).

I think this proves that CS7 and CN8 route radically different when there is a pass on the shortest route which is closed during winter (as the Furka Joch indeed is).
In my opinion CN8 is useless when planning a route through the Alps (if the planning is done in the long winter nights). And if I would use CS7 for the planning I could not trust the route I get then on CN8.

But maybe I am wrong, and this has nothing to do with winter closures of alpine passes at all.

What is CN8 NT doing? Anybody know?
 

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ampthill said:
This raises a question related to my Alpine tour at the end of June... If I set up Mapsource on my pc to use 'shortest routes', so as to encourage the route to follow alpine passes rather than make a deviation round them, does this mean I also need to have 'shortest route' as the preffered option on my Quest? I am concerned that when I download a route to the Quest, made in Mapsource with the 'shortest route', that when this route is transferred to the Quest, which is normally set on best route, it will reroute the original Mapsource route to the Quest settings and that I may end up not going over the Alpine passes I had originally planned. :(

Am I right to be concerned?
Yes, you are right in being concerned.

Most important is that you set "Off-route Recalculation" to "OFF". You should never ever calculate the route in the GPS if you want to ride on selected roads. It's only in MapSource where you can control and verify exactly what roads the routing algorithm selects.

On the other hand, as long as you don't do any recalculations of the uploaded routes in the GPS is not important what route preferences you have set the GPS to use.

One simple way to force the route through selected passes is of course to mark all passes with waypoints and include these waypoints in the route. Alp passes can be dowloaded from here and here.
 
Der Lustenauer said:
One of my local favourites, the Furka Joch, just a bit south of Lake Constance.

• the 1st picture shows my preference settings (they are the same on each picture),
• the 2nd what City SelectV7 suggests as shortest distance (Furka Joch! Exactly what I expect),
• the 3rd what City NavigatorV8 does with the same input (note, I just switch the map and recalculate),
• the 4th the first tweaking attempt to Bad Laterns (the barrier which closes the road is about 200 m after that)
• and the 5th the final route over the Furka Joch after another tweak (but if I would click just a little bit further to the right, the result would be different and I would have to tweak again).

I think this proves that CS7 and CN8 route radically different when there is a pass on the shortest route which is closed during winter (as the Furka Joch indeed is).
In my opinion CN8 is useless when planning a route through the Alps (if the planning is done in the long winter nights). And if I would use CS7 for the planning I could not trust the route I get then on CN8.

But maybe I am wrong, and this has nothing to do with winter closures of alpine passes at all.

What is CN8 NT doing? Anybody know?

Mine does exactly the same. V7 is far better IMO.

Dave
 
Der Lustenauer said:
I think this proves that CS7 and CN8 route radically different when there is a pass on the shortest route which is closed during winter (as the Furka Joch indeed is).
In my opinion CN8 is useless when planning a route through the Alps (if the planning is done in the long winter nights). And if I would use CS7 for the planning I could not trust the route I get then on CN8.

But maybe I am wrong, and this has nothing to do with winter closures of alpine passes at all.

What is CN8 NT doing? Anybody know?
This problem is not unique for V8.

I have used V4, V6, V7 and V8 a lot for routing in the Dolomites and noticed for example:

- The 4 map versons may give substancially different routes.

- There are obvious map bugs in all map versions. Normally V8 is better but at some places there are new bugs (!) in V8.

- At many places quite a few extra points are needed to force the road to follow the preferred road. The tricky thing is that the different map versions require extra points in different places. Sometimes this makes my life very complicated when I distribute the routes to other people with different map versions.

- I have not been able to find any evidence what so ever that winter closure in taken into account when routing.
 
HMR said:
This problem is not unique for V8.

I have used V4, V6, V7 and V8 a lot for routing in the Dolomites and noticed for example:

- The 4 map versons may give substancially different routes.

- There are obvious map bugs in all map versions. Normally V8 is better but at some places there are new bugs (!) in V8.

- At many places quite a few extra points are needed to force the road to follow the preferred road. The tricky thing is that the different map versions require extra points in different places. Sometimes this makes my life very complicated when I distribute the routes to other people with different map versions.

- I have not been able to find any evidence what so ever that winter closure in taken into account when routing.

I never found a bug so far (but would like to and report it with accurate description, if I found one).
I do not want Mapsource or CN8 to follow a preferred road, I want accurate information for the shortest or for the fastest route (depending on settings).
If you look at the examples I have been giving, every route starts shortly before the pass and ends shortly after. There is no shorter and no quicker route than over that particular pass!
Egon
 
I am really glad someone (thank you Dave!) confirms my findings (and goes to the trouble of replicating those routes). Thought it might be me only, being stupid.
I would now say that CS7 is at the very least more user friendly and gives more accurate information (like shortest distance and time for some routes) at the moment than CN8.

But, and that brings me back now to the start of the thread, why does CN8 calculate routes so differently (and overrides my ‘shortest (or quickest) route option’ in these examples)??? It is absolutely clear that it is not the shortest and not the fastest route (unless one takes into account the winter closure, then it is actually quite good)!
Why do I have to go into all this tweaking business when CS7 has been spot on from the start?

And, unless I know why all that happens, I can not really trust CN8 on longer routes where I do not know the area.

If the reason for this behaviour is really the closure of passes, then I expect a check box in MapSource, where I can switch that particular feature on and off (I checked now a lot of passes and it happens only on passes where there is a winter closure!).

Maybe all these issues are quite complicated.

Michael, you still up in the skies? I beg you; give advice or guidance to those in need! After all, you know the Furka Joch.
 
Grossglockner!
But, and this makes it even stranger to me, they both want to go over the Stilfser Joch, and that at this time of the year.
 

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Another interesting one, the Umbrail Pass.
 

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Wanted to let everybody who is

remotely interested in this boring subject that I have posted the following here

http://www.pocketgpsworld.com/modules.php?name=Forums&file=viewtopic&t=39971

I came across some strange routing propositions lately whilst playing with CN8. Always in the vicinity of Alpine Passes with winter closure.
I tried to investigate a bit further by making mini routes starting from the last village before a pass with winter closure to the village after it.
Great results I thought, CN8 indeed knows about winter closures and makes a nice route around it. Bravo Garmin.
But as I want to do the route in summer I wanted to tell Mapsource and CN8 not to worry (litigation etc.) and just get me the fastest and shortest route. Could not find a switch anywhere. Fine, might be added later on with a new version of MapSource. Changing the system clock to August did not seem to be a big bother in the meantime, but the route stayed the same. (Must admit, I did not restart the computer after changing the clock but nonetheless restarted MapSource, I mean, user friendliness and all, I really should not go to that length).
Tried CS7 next, no problem, shortest and quickest route over the pass.

An extreme example:
Umbrail Pass in Switzerland (next to Stilfser Joch/Passo Stelvio, next to Bormio):
Route from Barracho Del Braulio (nice name, isn’t it) to Santa Maria Val Mustair.
Note: did not change any settings, just switched between maps (CS7, CN8) in the same session and recalculated the same route. CS7 hops over the Umbrail and is there in a blink and CN8 plays the winter closure card and is doing a great detour.

Other passes where this occurs are the Furka Joch, the Silvretta Hochalpenstrasse and the Gross Glockner in Austria, in Switzerland the Albula Pass shows the same (here actually CN8 suggests a very nice detour over………., and that one is really only closed maybe a few days a year).

So far, so good (or bad for what I wanted to do) but now the strange bit comes.
In another test, both, CS7 and CN8 insist to go over the Stilfser Joch/Passo Di Stelvio. At this time of the year? CN8 you should know better, and I worry, what other passes they might have forgotten if they forgot that one?

Maybe all of this has nothing to do with winter closure at all and is just a coincidence, maybe I am just a stupid old git who can not get to grips with all this modern technologie?

Help would be greatly appreciated!
(Equipment used: CS6, CS7, CN8, MapSource 6.10.2, Quest 1 with bang on firmware)

That is the thread.
The only thing I have to add is

PS: PanEuropean, I miss you, show me please the errors of my ways, instead of cruising the skys.
 
Something is weird here! Why can't I recreate the problems with routing through winter closed passes on my computer? Must be something with the setup?

Michael (Pan) do you have any ideas?
 


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