Examples For Customizable Routing

In a previous post we described how to get started with customizable routing of the open source GraphHopper Routing Engine version 1.0. Today we’ll describe actual custom profiles by real world examples.

Update: this post was updated on 21th March 2021 to use the current development version 3.0 that contains major improvements to the format and will be released in early 2021.

Disclaimer: custom profiles were introduced in version 1.0 and have improved and matured in 3.0. This feature is now considered beta and will probably stable in 4.0 but it will still benefit from your feedback, so feel free to share your experience, custom profiles or problems you run into!

Demo Server

Currently all examples are linked to our demo server with world wide coverage for car, bike and foot. Still the default route is shown and to see the effect of the customization you need to click on the “custom” icon near the “Search” button and enter the custom profile.

The basic structure of a custom profile is described in this documentation.

Safe Biking

Let’s start with a simple example from the previous post – it shows how to avoid primary roads:

{
 "priority": [{
   "if": "road_class == PRIMARY",
   "multiply_by": 0.1
 }]
}

Other possibilities are for example to avoid roads with higher speed signs and prefer official bike network:

{
 "priority": [{
   "if": "max_speed >= 50",
   "multiply_by": 0.1
 }, {
   "if": "bike_network == MISSING",
   "multiply_by": 0.9
 }]
}

Avoid tunnels:

{
 "priority": [{
   "if": "road_environment == TUNNEL",
   "multiply_by": 0.01
 }]
}

Ride slower through e.g. pedestrian or footway. Here 5 minutes instead of 4:

{
 "speed": [{
   "if": "road_class == PEDESTRIAN",
   "multiply_by": 0.7
 }]
}

Cargo Bike

The normal bike profile allows routing over steps in cases where otherwise a long detour is made. But a bike used for deliveries or children cannot be carried and should never be routed over this and so you can exclude it with the road_class encoded value:

{
 "priority": [{
   "if": "road_class == STEPS",
   "multiply_by": 0
 }]
}

Further exclusions like ‘too narrow roads’ are possible which is important for e.g. cargo bikes:

{
 "priority": [{
   "if": "max_width < 1.5",
   "multiply_by": 0
 }, {
   "if": "road_class == PRIMARY",
   "multiply_by": 0.2
 }]
}

• 

Walking for Tourists

Increase preference of the official hiking network and accept greater detours. As you can see in the custom profile all roads marked with “foot_network=other” are avoided and so e.g. “foot_network=regional” is used.

{
 "priority": [{
   "if": "foot_network == MISSING",
   "multiply_by": 0.5
 }]
}

Economically Driving

There are many ways to save fuel. One is to drive slower and another is to prefer shorter routes. See how the custom profiles can look:

{
 "speed": [{
   "if": "true",
   "limit_to": 110
 }],
 "priority": [{
   "if": "road_class == MOTORWAY || road_class == SECONDARY",
   "multiply_by": 0.5
 }]
}

Prefer shorter routes. Here the faster motorway is avoided. To do that you increase the distance_influence:

{
 "distance_influence": 120
}

The distance_influence is independent of the road properties and does not influence the ETA. The default is 70 in seconds per 1km. Let’s assume a route that takes 1000sec and is 10km long, then a value of 30 means that I would like to drive maximum 11km to reduce the travel time to 970sec, or drive max 12km to reduce it to 940sec.

Now to the area feature:

Click on the image to calculate the route and paste the following profile:

{
 "priority": [{
   "if": "in_cottbus",
   "multiply_by": 0
 }],
 "areas": {
   "cottbus": {
    "type": "Feature", 
    "properties": {},
    "geometry": { 
      "type": "Polygon", 
      "coordinates": [[
       [ 14.31, 51.75 ],
       [ 14.34, 51.75 ],
       [ 14.34, 51.77 ],
       [ 14.31, 51.77 ],
       [ 14.31, 51.75 ]
      ]]
    }
   }
 }
}

A powerful concept is to combine areas with arbitrary other conditions. E.g. you can prefer or avoid certain roads only in or outside of an area. The following example avoids the motorway only outside of the specified area:

{
 "priority": [{
   "if": "road_class == MOTORWAY && in_near_cottbus == false",
   "multiply_by": 0
 }],
 "areas": {
  "near_cottbus": {
    "type": "Feature",
    "properties": {},
    "geometry": {
      "type": "Polygon",
      "coordinates": [[
        [ 13.84826, 51.6137 ],
        [ 13.9746, 51.61375 ],
        [ 13.97323, 51.82983 ],
        [ 13.84963, 51.83323 ],
        [ 13.84826, 51.6137 ]
      ]]
    }
   }
 }
}

Truck

You can use custom profiles to give the car profile several “truck” attributes. First of all you should reduce the max_speed and the speed and increase the distance_influence like we did for the “economically driving”.

Further changes can be done like avoiding ferries:

{
 "priority": [{
   "if": "road_environment == FERRY",
   "multiply_by": 0.1
 }, {
   "else_if": "road_class == RESIDENTIAL || road_class == TERTIARY",
   "multiply_by": 0.3
 }, {
   "else_if": "road_class == TRACK",
   "multiply_by": 0
 }]
}

Now to the typical truck use cases like avoid toll, width or height limitations:

{
 "priority": [{
   "if": "toll != NO",
   "multiply_by": 0.1
 }]
}

Consider more truck properties:

{
 "priority": [{
   "if": "hazmat == NO || hazmat_water == NO",
   "multiply_by": 0
 }, {
   "if": "hazmat_tunnel == D || hazmat_tunnel == E",
   "multiply_by": 0
 }, {
   "if": "max_width < 3 || max_weight < 3.5 || max_height < 4",
   "multiply_by": 0
 }]
}

Conclusion

As already mentioned this feature will strongly benefit from your feedback. So do not hesitate to share your experience, custom profiles or problems you are running into!

Happy custom routing!