Garmin's Active Routing

Maps highlight various popular routes depending on your activity, ie cycling or hiking

What is Garmin's Active Routing?

Maps with Active Routing contain a number of 'popular' routes created for hiking , cycling and mountain biking.
Highways have been checked for access ensuring cyclists don't get routed via footpaths
When you select an activity,ie cycling, all cycle routes are highlighted, same for walking, hiking etc
Unfortunately, they are still difficult to see unless you use TYPWiz7 to edit their colour,size or pattern
Details of all routes are contained in a .db file located in the SQL folder when using a gps device.

Active Routing on Mapsource

Mapsource does not support Active Routing but with some trickery you can make them visible.

Red lines are hiking trails, purple cycle routes.

Active Routing in OSM

You do not need NT TOPO 2012 maps to create active routing - in fact, using mkgmap , you can do much more than highlighting a highway in different colours - you can add symbols of your hiking/cycling etc routes as shown in picture left.

The equivalent in OSM for active routing is the 'relation' tag.