Understanding Road Surfaces and Routing on Beeline
Currently, Beeline highlights unpaved roads and trails. While we don't map every specific surface type (like gravel, cobblestone, or sand) individually yet, our routing system identifies whether a path is paved or unpaved to help you choose the best ride for your bike!
What surface data is available with Beeline?
When planning a route—either in the app or on our online route planner—you have the option to 'avoid unpaved surfaces.'
For cycling: This feature is currently available in Beeline Smart Routing areas (you can check your coverage here).
For motorcycles: This is covered everywhere.
When you select this option, Beeline uses road surface data to reduce the likelihood of routing you onto unpaved roads. On the online route planner, any unpaved sections will clearly show up as dashed route lines and dashed elevation charts, giving you full visibility before you head out.
How to check your road surfaces
Ready to plan your next ride? Head over to our online route planner to test it out.
Here’s what it looks like in action: when a path is marked as 'unpaved,' the planner highlights it with a dashed line (like the section shown running through the woodland below). You'll also get a handy breakdown of your route data right on the map screen, showing you the exact percentage split between paved and unpaved terrain before you set off.
If you would rather stick to the Beeline app, you can easily keep track of this on your phone, too! Once you've set your route in the Beeline app, as shown in the screenshot below, this will reveal the exact percentage breakdown of unpaved roads for your trip, next to the road rating percentage, the percentage of cycle lanes in your ride and your route type (bicycle/motorcycle)
Tip: You might have to scroll from right to left along these settings to see the unpaved percentage.
How Beeline Routing Works (FAQs)
What happens if I don't select "Avoid Unpaved Surfaces"?
Even if you don't turn this toggle on, our routing engine doesn't treat all surfaces equally. We heavily penalise routing on certain unpaved surfaces such as mud, and slightly penalise routing on things like compacted gravel to keep your ride as smooth as possible.
Can I choose to prioritise gravel or off-road routes?
Not at this time. There is currently no way to ask the routing engine for more gravel or to exclusively generate an off-road route (unless you are importing a specific third-party GPX file, you can import this in a breadcrumb format, as explained here).
Where does this surface data come from?
To make all of this happen, Beeline routes rely heavily on OpenStreetMap (OSM) data.
OSM provides the groundwork for determining exactly what a road is like—from its specific surface type to the types of vehicles allowed on it. All of that data talks directly to our routing mechanism to tell the Beeline app which roads are suitable and ready for your ride.
Because OpenStreetMap is a community-powered resource, it helps us deliver fantastic journeys! However, real-world road conditions are always changing. While we constantly monitor and update this data, keeping it accurate relies heavily on community involvement—and that’s where you can come in if you’d like! 🙂
Contributing surface information:
When it comes to surface information, there are some ways you can help to add this data to keep it as accurate as can be. Here's how you can contribute any surface corrections you spot:
Find the road or path you want to contribute a surface for on the OpenStreetMap website. In this example, we will be changing the surface of Watson Road.
Click edit. This will require you to create an OpenStreetMap account.
There can be an overwhelming amount of data on the screen. To hide irrelevant data, you can click the Map Data button and then choose map features to show and hide. The only relevant features for surface information are “Traffic Roads”, “Service Roads” and “Paths”, so you can safely hide the other features.
Find the road you want to change the surface for and click it, it will now have a red border around it. In this example, we are changing the surface for Watson Road.
An “edit feature" panel will appear, where you can enter the surface for the road. Use the arrow to the right to see the available values.
Some roads may be split into smaller parts, where fields might change between them. You will need to repeat the step above for each part of the road where the new surface applies. You can split a road by right-clicking a node on the way and pressing the scissors button.
Click " Save " in the top right corner.
Add a relevant changeset comment that describes what you have changed, select a relevant source of information, and click upload.
⚠️ Please bear in mind that you cannot use Google Street View or any other copyrighted data source for any information inserted into OpenStreetMap.
Your changes will be live instantly, and Beeline routing should take these into account when we next refresh our OpenStreetMap data.
Thank you for your contribution, we really appreciate it!
Notes
If you are not comfortable making these changes on OpenStreetMaps, that is totally understandable. If this is the case, please send us details of the location of the error, and we'll have another look. Given the nature, you'll need to be quite specific, supplying the road name where the error occurred. You can get in touch with the customer support team, here.