UKH

Does anyone know of a mapping website/app that shows the historic average road traffic levels that I could use to plan road riding routes with minimal traffic?

Gethin.

Some data here, but how useful I don't know...

https://roadtraffic.dft.gov.uk/#12/53.2636/-2.1955/basemap-countpoints

Thanks for link although I was more hoping to find something like a Google map with roads colour coded depending on traffic. Surely Google has data for this considering they do it for traffic jams at specific times.

On a desktop - Open Google Maps, click on the menu button in the top left and select traffic. You'll see 'Live Traffic' at the bottom of the screen. Click this and change it to 'Typical Traffic'. You can pick your day/time too

This is designed for planning point-to-point cycle trips but might be helpful: https://www.cyclestreets.net/ Gives you options based on how busy you want.

That doesn't really show traffic volumes, only if the road can't handle that volume and the resultant delays.  But if 10000 trucks an hour zoom along without deviating from their 55mph, it's shown as green. But hardly a good indicator of a pleasant cycling route.

I use Street View on google maps to look at any routes I'm thinking of doing. You can get some idea of traffic levels and width of carriageway / type of shoulder / type of exit, etc. 

I do this too, in conjunction with the heatmaps on Strava which show where most people have cycled. Although I think Strava's route planner is now for premium users only

In that case I don't think what you're after actually exists. How would you measure it other than how heavy (hence slower) traffic is moving? Put that together with a bit of knowledge of similar road types or local knowledge is probably the best you can do.

Good luck.

I'm sure they do, but sadly little of it gets out.

Given the datasets in the link, it shouldn't be too hard to overlay the information on a map. I might have a look at it. Might take a while though (bit busy despite lockdown).

That just tells you the average speed. It doesn't tell you if it was one car or a hundred lorries. The link I posted above has actual counts broken down by vehicle type. 

I find that can come up with some very odd route choices for areas I know, whatever speed chosen.  I usually go with a mixture including Strava/Sustrans/local club/sportive/magazine rides etc for new areas.  

I do use street view to check out landmarks at junctions when making notes about a route but it's quite laborious doing it for a longer ride.

Yes, I only use it for checking out how busy a particular stretch might be, especially getting into bigger cities or to ferry ports, etc.

Sometimes 'D' roads in France can be surprisingly busy whilst major roads elsewhere deserted. Last year I spent the day avoiding what on the map looked like a 'big angry red road' by going up and down endless getting nowhere on the back roads. When I did finally cross the main road, it turned out to be empty with a perfect tarmac surface and wide shoulders.  A bit more research would have helped!

The route-planning option is now behind a paywall. However, the global heatmap is still free to view: https://www.strava.com/heatmap#6.13/-5.24192/54.83109/hot/all

OK, for what it's worth...

I found it pretty easy to download the daily traffic count dataset from the DFT website, import it into Excel to narrow it down to my local area (East Cheshire) and upload that into a custom map on Google. You can then colour the markers based on whatever criteria make sense to you (I did a 'heatmap' based on 'total motorised traffic' and got something reasonably useful (with no programming). It would be slightly better to create a new column in Excel (or your spreadsheet of choice) which applies some 'nice for bikes' function based on the traffic data (e.g., bias it towards routes with lots of bike traffic and away from routes with HGVs) and then do a heatmap in Google Maps with based on this new column.

Of course you can overlay this info on a Google Map with live traffic for a bit more decision support data.

If you don't want to mess with a spreadsheet, you can download smaller datasets (e.g., by region or local authority) and import that straight into Google Maps. The full UK dataset is about 100MB, so Google may baulk at that. Or it might not?

If you need more detail instruction I can provide, but it's not too hard to figure it out. I was actually quite impressed how simple the process was.

Maybe have a look at what is being done on cycle.travel - the route planner uses real traffic data to avoid busy roads (https://cycle.travel/advice/map/difference) and the developer is usually very happy to discuss how it works on the site forum. As far as I know there's no feature to display the traffic data, but maybe it's being worked on.

You need to be careful with strava heatmaps.  I live near Box Hill which glows. However, Pebble Hill, just along the escarpment, is almost as bright.  Going down is fine, but grinding up it is vile - a rough, narrow ditch of a road. I refuse to ride up it (3 times in 10 years or so).   Downhill - chase that PB all the way.

https://www.strava.com/heatmap#14.81/-0.26552/51.25803/hot/all

I would prefer to cycle up a steep rough narrow ditch of a road, and down a smooth sweeping normal width one! 

Not with the traffic levels of a smooth sweeping normal one and with a level crossing at the bottom to group the traffic up and make sure that each car is progressively more impatient.  No redeeming features on the way up whatsoever