I started using Strava for recording rides and leaderboard features, but I’ve stayed for the route planner, frequently telling people how great it is compared to RidewithGPS and Komoot, largely for the heat map but also just for the general flexibility and resilience: base map doesn’t recognise a trail or track? No worries, just switch to manual.
However in recent months it has just gotten worse and worse, to the point where I’m now plotting in RidewithGPS and only still using Strava because I’m too lazy to synch RidewithGPS with my Garmin.
Issue 1: I have to use manual mode more and more, on large sections of trail which e.g. RidewithGPS will snap to. These are typically very minor singletracks but in my experience these are some of the best trails and a total pain to plot manually.
Issue 2: I’m now having to use manual mode even on some roads and tracks which Strava used to snap to! So either the base mapping has changed (someone has changed ‘all vehicle track’ to ‘footpath’ or something on OpenStreetmap?) or has Strava moved to a different base map?
Issue 3: Often when using manual mode it just goes a bit haywire, frequently adding ‘kinks’ to the plotted route where no waypoint exists, and these ‘kinks’ seem to act as some sort of wormhole where the route jumps to some other country and back adding 1000s of kilometers to my morning ride, I typically notice too late and have to retrace steps with the undo button until it goes away.
Issue 4: Track won’t snap to where I place the way point, even if there is a ‘snappable’ track there. It seems to be trying too hard to plot to ‘most used’ even when I am trying to force it to snap to the trail I want it to. This is on me partly as I always forget to switch it to ‘most direct’ before I start plotting, but it never used to do this.
Issue 5: Just general madness. Not much help to the techs but seriously, sometimes the route planner just does mad things these days that make it more and more of a chore to use. The frequent red box pop ups for even minor changes to the route are getting pretty tiresome if nothing else.
So I have the choice of sticking with the now seemingly broken route planner, or switching to RidewithGPS, but guess what Strava? I’m not paying subscriptions to both!
Please sort it.
Thanks