Cycling: what the signs, the routers, OSM and the parks say

Research of 2026-11-01 for ADR-0011.

Sources are primary where they could be had: statute texts, official park pages, the PTTK instruction, and router source code. Anything secondary or unconfirmed is marked [unconfirmed]. The OSM figures come from the Geofabrik extracts in map-data/extracts/: Poland’s and Czechia’s dated 2026-10-28, Slovakia’s 2026-10-01: the counts were run on that Slovak file, and the 2026-10-28 one beside it was not counted again. All three predate the current pin, OpenStreetMap as of 2026-10-30 (scripts/osm-data.pin). Unless a figure says otherwise, a relation is counted when a sampled member way falls inside a scripts/regions/*.poly polygon.

1. Signposts: times or kilometres?

Poland (PTTK). PTTK’s Instrukcja znakowania szlaków turystycznych (2014, uchwała 33A/18/2014 ZG PTTK) covers walking, mountain, cycling, skiing and horse trails (PDF).

Walking signposts give “czas przejścia (góry np. 3h 30’) lub odległości w kilometrach (niziny np. 2,6km)” (§ VIII.A).
The cycling signpost R-3 gives “nazwy miejscowości … z odległościami w kilometrach”, at most two places (§ VIII.D.1d).
The cycling signposts on public roads (R-4c, R-4d) are road signs under the 2003 road-signs regulation. R-4d is the “drogowskaz … podający odległość”.
Under an R-4, a plate may give a climb or descent gradient to 1% wherever it exceeds 3% (§ VIII.D.10).
The instruction has no cycling time and no rule for computing one. The only non-walking time it mentions is on horse trails: “w górach należy podawać odległość w godzinach marszu stępem”. It gives no formula for that either.
No regional or municipal Polish cycling time convention was found [unconfirmed: absence of evidence only].

Czechia (KČT).

KČT’s system page says cycle signs (IS 19 boards, IS 21 tables) carry “kromě čísla trasy také názvy cílů a vzdálenosti k nim”, and long-distance routes name a goal “ve vzdálenosti kolem 25-35 km” (kct.cz).
Czech walking signs are also in km: “směrovky informují o kilometrových vzdálenostech” (same page).
No time appears anywhere in KČT’s system.

Slovakia (SCK/KST).

Cycle routes are marked by the Slovenský cykloklub under STN 01 8028 (OSM wiki). The Prešov region’s guide says “the direction and the kilometre distance to the destination is determined by a cycle marker and a cycle sign” (presovregion.travel).
STN 01 8028 is a paid standard and was not read (normoff). That signs show km only and never times is therefore [unconfirmed at the standard level].

Conclusion: in all three countries, cycling signposts show kilometres. None of them has an official cycling equivalent of PTTK’s walking-time rule.

2. How planners compute cycling time

Engine	Flat speed	Uphill	Downhill	Surface / MTB grade
BRouter (trekking.brf, StdPath.java)	A physics model. It solves `S_C_x·v³ + m·g·(C_r + incline)·v = P` with defaults of 90 kg, 100 W, C_r 0.01 and S_C_x 0.225 m². That gives about 21.4 km/h on the flat.	Falls out of the same equation. That gives 3% ≈ 9.7, 5% ≈ 6.7, 10% ≈ 3.7 and 15% ≈ 2.5 km/h.	Capped at `maxSpeed` 45 km/h, or at the way’s `maxspeed` if lower. The cap is reached by about −5%.	The time model ignores surface; surface only changes routing cost. The `fastbike` profile uses the same defaults.
GraphHopper (BikeCommonAverageSpeedParser, MountainBikeAverageSpeedParser, bike_elevation.json)	Bike: 18 km/h on asphalt, cycleway and roads; track 12; path or footway 6; pushing sections 4. MTB: 20 km/h paved, 14–16 on dirt and gravel, 12 on grass; track grades run 20, 16, 12, 8, 4.	Slope ≥4% ×0.9; ≥8% ×0.6; ≥12% capped at 6 km/h; ≥15% capped at 3 km/h.	Slope ≤ −4% gives only ×1.10, so a descent is barely faster than the flat.	`mtb_rating` is `mtb:scale` + 1 (OSMMtbRatingParser). The `bike` profile excludes `mtb:scale` ≥ 2. The `mtb` profile caps `mtb:scale` ≥ 3 at 4 km/h with half priority, and excludes 6 (mtb.json).
OSRM (bicycle.lua)	15 km/h default; track 12; path 13; pushing 4. Surface table: gravel 6, ground 10, dirt 8, mud and sand 3.	None. The stock profile has no elevation. Elevation is possible only through a raster `segment_function`, as in the example rasterbot.lua: `duration / (1 − 5·slope)`.	Same raster hook, no cap.	Speed is the minimum of the highway, surface, tracktype and smoothness values. It respects `maxspeed`.
Valhalla (bicyclecost.cc)	Road 25, cross 20, hybrid 18, mountain 16 km/h.	Grade factor: +3% ×0.85; +5% ×0.75; +8% ×0.55; +10% ×0.5; +15% ×0.3.	−3% ×1.4; −5% ×1.7; −8% ×2.0; −10% ×2.2 (the table’s maximum).	A surface factor per bike type: a mountain bike on “path” gets ×0.55, a road bike there gets 0. Dismount 5.1 km/h.
Komoot	Not published. A fitness slider from Untrained to Pro changes the time but not the route (komoot running-app page). The support article on Pace says the duration follows the chosen pace (support).	[unconfirmed]	[unconfirmed]	Komoot exposes sport types (road, gravel, MTB, touring), but not their speeds.
Mapy.com (mapy.cz)	Not published. A blog says the estimate uses only distance and climb, ignoring surface (bezpodpory.cz).	[unconfirmed]	[unconfirmed]	[unconfirmed]

What they share: a flat speed of 15–25 km/h depending on bike type and surface, and a steep falloff uphill. On the downhill they differ by a factor of 2 or more: GraphHopper adds +10%, Valhalla multiplies by up to 2.2, and BRouter runs to a 45 km/h cap. For mountain terrain, only GraphHopper ties speed to mtb:scale (4 km/h at scale 3 and above).

3. OSM tagging

Route types and networks.

route=mtb is for “named, numbered or otherwise signed routes, designated for mountain biking”. route=bicycle is the general case (wiki).
Both use network=icn/ncn/rcn/lcn.
Slovakia maps SCK routes to ncn (three-digit refs, red), rcn (four-digit refs; blue starts with 2, green with 5, yellow with 8) and lcn (wiki).
Czech cyclo routes form one KČT national network, and the number of digits gives the class (wiki).
Our Regions hold about 1,450 cycling route relations, by two counts:
- Per Region, with osmium extract -s smart -p scripts/regions/<id>.poly on each country’s extract, every relation in the nine outputs counted once by its id, since the Regions overlap and cross borders: 1,054 route=bicycle, 411 route=mtb and, for scale, 2,754 route=hiking. Per Region below.
- By a sampled member way, the default above: 1024 route=bicycle (463 rcn, 429 lcn, 47 ncn, 16 icn) and 410 route=mtb. Of the MTB relations, 232 have no network and 115 are lcn. It misses a relation whose sampled way lies outside every polygon while other members lie inside, which a smart extract keeps.

Region	`route=bicycle`	`route=mtb`	`route=hiking`
`beskid_niski`	47	15	179
`beskidy_zachodnie`	206	95	571
`bieszczady`	43	4	136
`gorce_pieniny`	120	56	291
`gory_swietokrzyskie`	76	0	67
`sudety_srodkowe`	229	113	651
`sudety_wschodnie`	112	68	234
`sudety_zachodnie`	222	77	519
`tatry`	95	0	340

A relation in two Regions counts in both rows, so the rows add up to more than the totals.

Direction.

Member roles forward and backward mean that the route uses a way only in, or only against, its drawn direction. signed_direction=yes means the route “is to be cycled in only one direction” (wiki).
oneway:bicycle=yes/-1/no overrides oneway for cyclists. When it is absent, the cyclist follows oneway (wiki).
In our Regions, 929 of the 6866 route=mtb member ways (13.5%) carry oneway=yes/-1, and 650 carry a forward or backward role. For route=bicycle the figures are 2743 of 71,594 ways (3.8%) and 1893.

Difficulty.

mtb:scale runs from 0 to 6, for flat and downhill riding. 0 means “no special skills”, 3 means “very good skills”, and 6 means “not rideable”.
mtb:scale:uphill runs from 0 to 5. Level 5 means “too steep and/or difficult to ride uphill” (wiki).
mtb:type is “in use” on both ways and routes (wiki). Worldwide it is mostly crosscountry (12.5k), allmountain (4.2k) and downhill (3.4k) (taginfo).
No downhill/flow trail uses route=piste in our data. That tag is for winter fatbike pistes only.
Coverage in our Regions is thin. mtb:scale is on 14% of MTB-route ways and 1.5% of bicycle-route ways, mostly at 0–1. surface is on 61% and 76%.

Signed trail centres: yes, mapped as one-way.

Singltrek pod Smrkem (r611323, operator=Singltrek, s.r.o.) is a super-relation of loops. Loops such as Rapický okruh (r1636172) and Hřebenáč (r1636174) are tagged oneway=yes with forward members. Their ways are highway=path, oneway=yes, bicycle=designated, foot=no. The access line “Nástupní” (r1636173) has no roles, so it is ridden both ways.
Enduro Trails Bielsko-Biała: each line is its own route=mtb with colour, ref, mtb:type=allmountain and a negative incline. Examples are Twister (r5738733, −6.4%) and Stefanka (r5738736, −4.8%). Most of them have no network tag. Their ways are mostly highway=cycleway, oneway=yes, foot=no, bicycle=designated, and their member roles are empty. Climbing is done on a separate uphill line, Daglezjowy (r6674939, incline=6.5%, mtb:scale:uphill=1).
Rychlebské stezky (r377944, mtb:type=allmountain / enduro) has 29 of its 61 members with forward or backward roles, but only one oneway way in the extract. Its sub-trails, such as Trail dr. Wiessnera and SuperFlow, are fully one-way. Some Czech centres also use signed_direction=yes, for example the Mamutí/Lesní/Mlýnský trails (r14302065–7).
Inconsistency: direction sits sometimes on the way (oneway), sometimes in the relation role, and sometimes in both. No single tag can be relied on.

Bends: OSM marks almost none off the roads.

Counted over all of Poland, on poland-261028.osm.pbf: osmium tags-filter -R for hazard and the traffic_sign keys, then the bend signs A-1 to A-4 (PL:A-1 … PL:A-4, four of them written without the hyphen) read out of every traffic_sign* key’s sign list (traffic_sign, :forward, :backward, and :2, which holds one of them), and osmium getparents for the ways a node sits on.
62 objects carry hazard=curve (40) or hazard=curves (22): 46 ways, all roads, and 16 nodes, one of them on a cycleway.
138 carry a bend sign: 136 nodes and 2 ways. Most of the nodes stand beside a road rather than on it. Of those on a way, one is on a track and the rest on roads; none is on a path, footway or cycleway.

Access.

bicycle=no/yes/designated/dismount on the way decides access, and GraphHopper, OSRM and Valhalla all honour it (see their profiles above).
In a box over the Polish Tatras, 503 of 1444 path, track and footway ways carry bicycle=no, 29 carry bicycle=yes (for example Droga Brata Alberta and Kuźnice), and none carry designated. Most of TPN’s six legal routes (see § 4) are therefore not tagged bicycle=yes on the ways [unconfirmed per route: each route was not checked].

4. Bikes in the national parks

The statutes forbid bikes off designated routes in all three countries.

PL: Ustawa o ochronie przyrody, art. 15 ust. 1 pkt 15, forbids “ruchu pieszego, rowerowego, narciarskiego i jazdy konnej wierzchem, z wyjątkiem szlaków i tras narciarskich wyznaczonych przez dyrektora parku narodowego” (consolidated text Dz.U. 2024 poz. 1478).
CZ: zákon 114/1992 § 16(1)(m) forbids riding “na kole nebo na koni mimo silnice, místní komunikace a místa vyhrazená orgánem ochrany přírody” (zakonyprolidi).
SK: zákon 543/2002 § 14(1)(b), the third degree of protection and the default in national parks under § 19(2), forbids “vchádzať alebo stáť s bicyklom … mimo diaľnice, cesty, miestnej komunikácie a vyznačenej cyklotrasy” (2014 consolidation). This text was amended in 2022 and 2024, and the current wording was not verified.

Park	What the park’s own page or order says
TPN (Tatry PL)	“tylko na udostępnionych do tego celu szlakach lub drogach”: six routes, for example Droga pod Reglami 10.7 km, Dolina Chochołowska 6.5 km and Dolina Suchej Wody 6.4 km. There are no bikes on the Morskie Oko road or in Kościeliska, pedestrians have absolute priority, and the legal basis is Zarządzenie 6/2026 (tpn.gov.pl). A season of 1 May–30 Nov and hours of 8–18 appear only on a retailer’s page [unconfirmed].
TANAP (Tatry SK)	Bikes are allowed on roads, on routes marked with the standard cycle sign, and on designated places in daytime. The basis is § 5 of the Okresný úrad Prešov decree on the Návštevný poriadok (tanap.sk).
Babiogórski	The official page has no text (bgpn.gov.pl). A blog and a rental listing say bikes are not allowed in the park at all (bezprawnik) [unconfirmed].
Gorczański	The visitor rules say bikes “wyłącznie po odpowiednio oznakowanych szlakach … dopuszczonych do ruchu rowerowego”, in groups of at most 5, giving way to walkers, skiers and riders (regulamin). There are about nine routes, for example Hucisko–Turbacz and Borek–Schronisko PTTK pod Turbaczem (gpn.gov.pl).
Pieniński	Two routes are open: the red Droga Pienińska (Szczawnica–Červený Kláštor, 10.5 km) and the green Krościenko–Kras (2.5 km). “Trasy rowerowe pokrywają się ze szlakami pieszymi” (piepn.gov.pl).
Bieszczadzki	Bikes are allowed on public roads and, with a ticket, on marked bike trails (about 75 km in total). “poruszanie się rowerem po pieszych szlakach turystycznych nie jest dozwolone” (bdpn.gov.pl).
Magurski	“turystyka rowerowa tylko po drogach publicznych, wyznaczonych szlakach rowerowych, i drogach zakładowych wskazanych przez Dyrektora”, from sunrise to sunset. Five named bike trails, with visitor caps (Zarządzenie 12/2026, annexes 1 and 6, mpn.gov.pl).
Karkonoski / KRNAP	KRNAP: cycling is banned except on roads and local roads (not on forest roads) and on routes the Správa designates. There are more than 460 km of such routes, under Opatření obecné povahy 1/2026 (krnap.cz). KPN (PL): no official page was found. A National Geographic piece says bikes are allowed only on the route segments that cross the park (natgeo.pl) [unconfirmed].
Gór Stołowych	Lists designated routes: the “Góry Stołowe” loop Karłów–Pasterka–Droga nad Urwiskiem–Skalne Grzyby–Batorów (24 km), the Masaryk route (about 18 km on the PL side), yellow connectors and ER-2. Walkers have absolute priority (pngs.gov.pl).
Świętokrzyski	Lists two: the green walking-and-cycling path Nowa Słupia–Święta Katarzyna, and the “Barabasz” path Bukowa Góra–Wilków (swpn.gov.pl). It does not state the restriction itself; art. 15 applies.

Short answer: yes. In every one of these parks, bikes may go only on designated routes (plus public roads), and Babia Góra may allow none. Many of the designated routes are shared with walking trails, with walkers having priority.

What this means for Kozica

There is no official cycling-time rule to adopt. Signposts in PL, CZ and SK show kilometres only, so km should be the primary figure. Any time Kozica shows is our own estimate and should be labelled as one, unlike the PTTK walking time.
The time model should be our choice, and we should defend it. The flat speed, the uphill falloff and above all the downhill cap are where the engines disagree, from GraphHopper’s +10% to BRouter’s 45 km/h. On MTB terrain, surface and mtb:scale should cap speed, as GraphHopper’s 4 km/h at scale 3 and above does. Coverage of those tags is thin (14% / 1.5%), so the defaults will carry most of the network.
Direction is real for bikes and absent for walkers. build-network.py’s oneway() reads only foot tags. A cycling network needs oneway, oneway:bicycle, the relation roles forward/backward and signed_direction. Trail-centre descents (Smrk, Bielsko, Rychleby) must not be offered uphill, and their separate climbing lines carry the return.
The national parks reduce to one rule. Off public roads, a bike may use only a way on a designated route. Inside the park polygons, the router should trust route membership (route=bicycle/mtb) and bicycle=no over plain path access. OSM does not tag TPN’s legal routes bicycle=yes consistently.
route=mtb mixes two kinds of thing. It holds long signed touring routes (the rcn “Pętla …” loops, Babia Góra Trails) and short one-way trail-centre lines with no network. The two likely need different treatment in display and timing.