How EasyRoads scores roads
Overview of model gb-ease-v4 · Great Britain (England, Scotland, Wales) · Updated 21 August 2026
EasyRoads compares complete route candidates in one unit: equivalent minutes. A real minute of driving always counts as exactly one equivalent minute, so every comfort charge below is stated as “minutes per kilometre” you can weigh against time yourself.
Road-class rates
The base rate charged for every kilometre of each road class:
| Road class | min/km |
|---|---|
| Motorway | 0 |
| Trunk | 0.01 |
| A-road (primary) | 0.04 |
| B/C-road (secondary) | 0.22 |
| Tertiary | 0.75 |
| Residential | 0.50 |
| Local / unclassified | 1.25 |
| Service | 1.40 |
| Track | 2.20 |
| Unknown class | 1.10 |
Bends
- Bending is measured from the road geometry itself (degrees turned per kilometre), stored on our national graph at import.
- No charge up to 60°/km. Above that the charge grows linearly and is capped at 1.5 min/km before scaling down for bigger roads — a bendy dual carriageway is not a bendy lane.
- Sections that are both minor and notably bendy (>180°/km) are flagged as difficult in the route sheet.
Narrow roads and width margin
- A carriageway recorded with
lanes=1is currently charged 0.9 min/km as a narrow-road heuristic. That tag alone does not prove physical width or opposing-traffic layout. - If recorded width leaves less than 65 cm of clearance over your vehicle's width, the charge grows with the shortfall (quadratic, capped at four times its base strength). Wider vehicles feel this sooner — by design.
- We do not know passing places, forward visibility or traffic levels from the map, so narrow sections say so instead of guessing.
Surface and smoothness
| Evidence | min/km |
|---|---|
| Unpaved / gravel / ground | 2.2 |
| Cobblestone / sett / compacted | 0.8 |
| Smoothness bad → impassable | 0.8 → 3.5 |
Where surface and smoothness disagree, only the stronger charge applies.
Honest uncertainty
When road-character evidence is thin, the rate shrinks towards a pessimistic prior rather than pretending confidence: roughly +0.4 min/km when evidence is medium-thin and about +1.1 min/km when it is largely missing. Unknown stays unknown on the route sheet too — it is never silently treated as easy or as blocked.
Your preference sets the detour budget
| Preference | Extra time considered | Ease weight |
|---|---|---|
| Fastest | from 3 min, capped at 8 min or 10% longer | ×0.2 |
| Easier drive | from 8 min, capped at 22 min or 28% longer | ×1 |
| A-roads first | from 12 min, capped at 35 min or 45% longer | ×1.35 |
Larger vehicles scale the ease terms smoothly (width matters more than length). A candidate dominated on every outcome — longer and narrower and bendier, and so on — is never recommended regardless of coefficients; among the rest we pick the balanced knee between extra minutes and comfort gained.
What this does not claim
- It is not a safety rating and not legal advice for your vehicle.
- Open mapping does not record usable width at hedges, passing places or every physical restriction; current-works coverage is incomplete outside major routes.
- Works reports warn and reorder candidates; they never prove a route clear.