Tunnels show total ascent as if on surface terrain

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• Julien Plotaroute   Monday 17 Nov 2025 05:05:50

  Hi Liam,

  Thank you for suggesting this.
  
  In some cases, we already have an information bubble next to a route's elevation data.
  So a warning about tunnels and/or bridges might be something the devs could add.

  I'll add this request.

  Kind regards,
  Julien

• Liam Healy   Saturday 15 Nov 2025 02:59:50

  Thanks Julien. Another option is Bikemap, see the same route https://web.bikemap.net/r/17787914, which seems to show these tunnels correctly. I've noticed bikemap generally shows about 10-20% lower total climbing than plotaroute, but this is much lower than that, and the profile map shows no significant hills on the two tunnels.

  On one of the issues you referenced, someone suggested having a bypass option but I think the response showed the comment was misunderstood. If I could designate two points and ask it to linearly interpolate the elevation (instead of using the DEM models), that would work better than having no option. It does not require any access to any extra data; the burden is on the user to designate the segment a tunnel, and just draw a straight line between the elevations at the two points (and include that in the count of climbing, rather than the surface terrain). At least, please show a warning that climbing totals do not properly account for tunnels.

  Liam

• Julien Plotaroute   Wednesday 12 Nov 2025 04:35:00

  Hi Liam,

  This is something which has been brought up a couple of times on the forum, along with other questions regarding the Digital Elevation Model.

  Sadly, this is not something we're currently working on.

  In the following two posts, other users have suggested also using Garmin, Strava and RideWithGPS to help with this.
  https://www.plotaroute.com/posts/2352/D/1
  https://www.plotaroute.com/posts/3401/D/1

  Kind regards,
  Julien

• Liam Healy   Tuesday 11 Nov 2025 16:37:49

  When a route goes through a tunnel, the total ascent seems to be on the surface terrain; see 3128263, where the first two "hills" are actually in Rays Hill Tunnel and Sideling Hill Tunnel. As these were originally constructed as railroad tunnels, I expect they are fairly level.