Help - looking for a european map of cycle-only "highways", to avoid sharing roads with cars

Hi guys,

does anyone of you know if there is a great, big, comprehensive map for all the european bicycle highways?
Either digital or as an old-fashioned printed map?
I.e. so you are able to plan a route that uses almost exclusively bicycle roads that are completely closed for motorized vehicles, so you can totally avoid sharing a road with cars?

If that doesn't exist for europe, then maybe at least for different european countries (maybe also US)?

I would be super-grateful for any hints and advice!

By the way: do cycle-only highways exist in Japan, does anyone know?

http://www.eurovelo.com/en

Totally closed but pretty good.

I'd start with this

http://www.eurovelo.com/en/eurovelos

Are you sure that these routes exclude roads shared with motorized traffic?

Go to Germany - Political will doesn't exist in the UK*

*See the UK roll-out of Avenue Verte from London.

go to germany - if you have to ride on a road there for more than a few mins at a time you've done something wrong.

aehm, I am in Germany

Getting around simply on segregated cycleways will be hard going imho...have cycled a fair bit I'm France where the introduction of highways has left minor roads as cycle routes that are shared with local traffic that is courteous.

Have you tried the website biroto.eu ? They have amalgamated a significant number of bike routes across Europe. The section covering Germany, and more specifically Berlin/Brandenburg (where I live) is really good. All routes can be seen on a map as well. They do not list sections that are 'car free' as such, but the routes I have followed have been pretty low on mileage alongside cars, sticking instead to rideable paths and trails.

sounds interesting (especially as I live in Berlin, too), but what I am really looking for is a map that actually lets me plan car-free routes.
I know this won't be possible everywhere, but it would be great at least to see where it's possible.

What about the route planning tool on Strava but set to plot a route suitable for runners?
I've used this successfully whilst planning off road routes several times before though you need to be careful that it doesn't casually slip a number of sets of stairs into the route without you realising...

Berlin - have you seen the route for the Transgermany? The section between Forst and Erkner is pretty much all off road, and highly recomended!

What are you planning?

Would be wonderful if this existed. Some of the' bike-only' paths and routes devised can sometimes be more treacherous than shared routes, if you are looking for safety. Adventure Cycling might be some help for the US angle.

Doesn't let you select 'car-free' routes but favours bike friendly routes-I use it a lot:

http://cycle.travel/map

How'd the bike jumble go?

Komoot lets you choose open cycle map.
Then you can see all the cycling routes/paths with their names. I use it to check if the route komoot plans sends me down a busy road when there's a cycle path alternative somewhere nearby.

JoelW: thanks, that sounds interesting. I am not planning anything right now, more like looking for a source of cycle-only ways to be able to plan

über: that cycle.travel map looks interesting, too. will check it out. bike jumble was nice!

I use cycle.travel all the time. It can be a bit too conservative, but in general it does a fantastic job of picking quiet routes.

that cycle.travel thing looks good, I have just compared it to a recent route that I took and it seems to able to really highlight cycle-only paths (blue dots?), but I can't find an actual legend explaining it??

komoot is also nice, but doesn't seem to differentiate between road types and cycleability, but the annotations of other users seem to be really valuable.
I think when combining both, this is really cool.

In terms of legend, I would really appreciate if there is way to see if a small road is paved, cobblestoned, hard packed gravel, graded dirt, or loose sand (komoot as well as cycle.travel). I have a map like that for driving cars in the southwest US, must be possible to have that for bikes, too.

EDIT: found the legend in cycle.travel, they call it "key" and it actually has all of the above - super cool. komoot needs to upgrade here - the offer other maps in the layer options, but there is no legend/key for those, only for their komoot map??

I wish there was a way to have all the user annotations from komoot in the cycle.travel map!! And it would be cool to be able to overlay a satellite view, too.

In komoot you click on the route and it tells you what (it thinks) the surface is.
Also theres the pop up thing with elevation that when you click view settings gives you waytypes and surfaces.

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In cycle.travel you can left click one any road and you have the option to either "find photos" or "streetview", one gives you geotagged photos from either that location or nearby, the other calls up Google streetview (even on mobile).
If you have a data connection, you can even generate a map on the fly and save it to your gps (download to an SD card), it can be a real lifesaver in that sense.
Adding via points allows you to route along roads it's trying to avoid if you are in familiar territory, or feel comfortable trying based on the streetview.