Spokli
Night routes

Night routes: know what your ride looks like after dark

Night routes find well-lit, comfortable bike routes for the time of day you're riding, with fewer difficult turns, smoother surfaces and less climbing.

Join waitlist

Night route

6.4 km · 25 min

  • 82% well lit
  • 4 dark sections
  • 6 turns
  • +28 m climbing

A calmer, better-lit ride at night

When it's dark, the right route can make a big difference. Night routes prioritise well-lit streets while still counting turns, traffic lights, climbing and surface quality. The result is a route that feels easier after dark, with its lighting coverage shown openly.

Standard route

5.8 km · 24 min

  • 17 turns
  • 11 traffic lights
  • 72 m climbing
  • 46% well lit

Night route

6.4 km · 25 min

  • 6 turns
  • 4 traffic lights
  • 28 m climbing
  • 82% well lit

Illustrative numbers, not a measured ride.

When do Night routes appear?

Night is offered only in darkness, computed from the sun's position for your departure time in Berlin. In daylight you see Fast and Comfort. A ride that starts at dusk is judged for the time you will actually be on each stretch. The "avoid dark stretches" preference gives Comfort the same lighting weights at any hour.

Where the lighting data comes from

We combine official municipal data with open data and careful modelling to estimate how well each street is lit.

Municipal lamp inventory

Berlin's public lighting inventory: about 205,000 street lamps with their type and position. Gas lamps count at half weight because they are much dimmer.

Open data sources

OpenStreetMap, where mappers have recorded whether a street or path is lit, and surveyed unlit paths from the bbbike project, a Berlin bike router maintained by hand for 25 years.

Careful modelling

Every street is sampled every five metres against the lamps within 25 metres, with closer lamps counting more. From that, each stretch gets a class: lit, dim, dark or unknown.

Read the article

What the lighting data is not

Our lighting data is a model, not a physical measurement of light levels. It shows where lighting is likely to be present, but it does not guarantee actual brightness on the ground, and it is not a safety rating.

  • Not field-verified yetWe have not physically measured light levels on the ground. During the pilot, Night routes carry a visible low-confidence note.
  • Not a real-time feedIt does not account for broken lights, temporary outages or a tree in front of a lamp.
  • Not a measure of brightnessIt shows where lights are likely to be, not how bright a street actually is. Bridges and tunnels are deliberately "unknown".

Coverage

Lighting data is available for the whole of Berlin, our pilot city. Private and unmapped lights in parks and courtyards are missing from the inventory, so those paths carry lower confidence. Every Night route shows how many metres are lit, dim, dark and unknown, and unknown is never painted as fine.

About Berlin
Berlin
City-wide; lower confidence on park paths and in courtyards.

Be confident on your night rides

Join the waitlist and be the first to try Night routes in Berlin.

Join waitlist

  • Better lit routesRide on streets with lighting.
  • Fewer difficult turnsKeep your focus on the ride, not your phone.
  • Smoother surfacesAvoid rough streets that are harder to see at night.
  • Less climbingSave your energy for an easier ride.
All articles
  1. Data and maps

    Lit or not: what Spokli knows and what it cannot

    205,000 lamps from Berlin's open data, a few rules for what a lamp on the map says about light on the road, and a frank list of what the model does not know.

    4 min read