Where the data comes from

Cycle routes, streets and places

Everything comes from OpenStreetMap, the free map edited by thousands of people. © OpenStreetMap contributors, available under the ODbL licence. If a cycle path is missing or wrong, it can be fixed in OpenStreetMap and it will show up here in the next update. OpenStreetMap data is read from the regional extracts published by Geofabrik.

We classify cycling infrastructure like this:

• Separated cycle path: highway=cycleway, or a path with bicycle=designated.
• Painted bike lane: cycleway=lane or track (on either side).
• Shared street: cycleway=shared_lane or share_busway, and bicycle streets (cyclestreet, bicycle_road).
• Path, bikes allowed: a pavement or path with bicycle=yes.

The kilometres for each city are on its page: see all cities.

Addresses and places in the search

In Medellín and Bogotá addresses are located with each city’s official address register. In the rest of the world, street-and-number addresses come from the addresses theme of Overture Maps, which gathers open official registers; in the Netherlands, the Kadaster’s register of addresses and buildings (BAG), published through OpenAddresses and the Nationaal Georegister.

Medellín: Distrito Especial de Ciencia, Tecnología e Innovación de Medellín – GeoMedellín – Secretaría de Gestión y Control Territorial – Subsecretaría de Catastro. Nomenclatura Domiciliaria. Licence CC BY-SA 4.0. Cicloruta normalises the addresses and combines them with other sources to locate them; it does not redistribute the dataset.

Bogotá: Unidad Administrativa Especial de Catastro Distrital (UAECD) – IDECA. Placa domiciliaria, version of 3 April 2024. Licence CC BY 4.0. District boundaries: Secretaría Distrital de Planeación and OpenStreetMap.

Places (shops, clinics, universities, parks) combine OpenStreetMap with Overture Maps Foundation (Places, CDLA Permissive 2.0 licence). Place data can have location errors; we cross-check sources and official addresses to discard inconsistent entries.

How the route is chosen

The route is calculated on your phone over the city’s street network. Each type of street has a cost per metre: a separated cycle path is the cheapest and a fast road the most expensive. “Safest” strongly penalises streets with traffic; “Most direct” barely does. Climbs count as extra distance, because in a hilly city a slope weighs more than a couple of blocks.

Sections shown in orange are pedestrian-only: the app asks you to get off and walk.

Elevation

Heights come from the Copernicus DEM GLO-30 digital surface model (© DLR e.V. 2010-2014 and © Airbus Defence and Space GmbH 2014-2018, provided under COPERNICUS by the European Union and ESA). It is a surface model: under bridges and among tall buildings it can be wrong, so on bridges and viaducts we interpolate between the ends.

Base map

Vector tiles from Protomaps, built from OpenStreetMap and hosted on this same server.

Contact

A mistake on the map, a missing cycle path or a suggestion? Write to helena.cortes@udea.edu.co.

Disclaimer

Cicloruta is an aid, not a guarantee. Data can be incomplete or outdated and the real street always wins: follow the signs, give way to pedestrians and obey traffic rules.