How Spokli picks a route
The shortest path is only the shortest. Spokli searches for the route with the lowest total effort, counted in minutes you would actually trade: riding time, expected waiting, and the attention that turns, crossings, cobblestones and climbs demand.
Everything is counted in minutes
Kilometres, turn counts and metres of climbing cannot simply be added up. Spokli converts each of them into one unit: equivalent minutes. Riding time is the base. Every traffic light adds the waiting you can expect, plus a stop and a restart. Every meaningful turn adds a few seconds of attention. A cobblestone stretch counts for about two and a half times its riding time. A climb counts more the steeper it gets.
The route with the smallest total wins. That is why a Comfort route can be a few hundred metres longer and still come out ahead: it saves more in interruptions than it costs in distance.
Shortest route
5.8 km · 24 min
- 17 turns
- 11 traffic lights
- +72 m climbing
Comfort route
6.5 km · 25 min
- 5 turns
- 4 traffic lights
- +31 m climbing
What Spokli counts
Honest counts first. A route is only as good as the things it is measured by.
What counts as a turn
Not every bend is a decision. A curve in a continuous cycleway, a change of street name, or switching between a road and its own cycle track is not a turn you must think about. A junction where you leave your corridor is. Spokli counts those decisions, merges manoeuvres within a few metres of each other into one, and announces exactly that: one instruction per decision.
Traffic lights, crossings and the left turn
A signal is counted once per junction you actually pass. Crossing a bigger road without a signal costs waiting too. And a left turn off a multi-lane road is what cyclists know it to be: straight across, then wait for the second light. Spokli charges that time in every route and avoids it in Comfort.
Surface and climbing
"Paved" is not "smooth". Spokli tells asphalt from uneven paving, cobblestones, gravel and unpaved ground, and keeps "unknown" as its own class. Where a street has a cycle track, the track's surface counts. Climbing comes from a one-metre terrain model, smoothed so bridges do not invent hills, and weighted so a steep ramp costs more than the same metres spread over a kilometre.
Lighting after dark
After dusk, the Night route adds a stronger preference for lit streets, built from Berlin's public lamp inventory and OpenStreetMap. Every Night route shows how much of it the data covers.
How Night routes workThen you ride
Every Comfort route states its difference to Fast in plain terms: how much longer, how much slower, how many fewer turns and lights. Then the app gets out of the way.
Voice first
Each decision is announced early and again when it comes. Closely spaced turns are said together. On a long straight, Spokli stays quiet.
A wrong turn is not a crisis
A missed turn gets a new route forward from where you are, not a demand to go back.
Keeps going without signal
Guidance continues with the screen off and without a connection on the planned route. After the ride, one question: would you ride this route again?
Help us build better bike routes for real cities.
Join the waitlist to be the first to try Spokli when it launches in Berlin.