Route Creation available for Trainers Level 48 and above

Trainers Level 48 and above can now create Routes! If you’re level 48 and above, restart your game and you should have the ability to create Routes now. Up to this change, Route creation was limited to members of the Wayfarer community, select high level Trainers, and Niantic’s own employees.

Although the option to create a Route is expanding to more Trainers, Route review and approval / rejection is still a very confusing process. Some Trainers reported getting their approved swiftly, others have highlighted that the current AI-backed process exhibits some weird behaviour.

A notable point of contention is the AI system that does the initial round of Route reviews, which some believe may not accurately recognize footpaths from sources like OpenStreetMap. Additionally, there’s speculation that the game’s word filter might be overly strict, leading to rejections for seemingly innocuous route names.

We pulled a couple of interesting quotes from this Reddit thread, and we think that they capture the state of the review system quite accurately:

• “I got my first rejection. I have no idea why really. The whole route is visible on the map as footpaths, though part of that footpath is on a long causeway across a lake. Maybe the AI doesn’t recognize footpaths from Openstreetmap?” – stevewmn
• “The word filter is REALLY bad. It’s blocking the most harmless words. I worked out my route was rejected because it included the word “bush” in it.” – swanny246
• “Some people get denied for simple and reasonable Routes, while someone in my community was approved for a literal 29 minute walk thru our local indoor mall 🤨” – GR7ME

• “The backlog seems to be very random. I still have some from a month ago in review, yet of the four I submitted two days ago, three of them went live yesterday. There’s not really much consistency”. – Dialgan

In a recent discussion with Kim Adams, Director of Art and Production at Niantic, we talked about a variety of topics, including Route approval, and Adams confirmed that the initial goal to get Routes out in 24-48 hours was an overly optimistic goal.

Adams also did share that AI reviews are not the only reviews used in the process, and that human reviews are equally as important, as AI cannot spot some of the problems humans can – inappropriate wording, oddly shaped Routes, and private property / K12 obstruction paths to name a few.

We are not sure how this situation will unfold, and we recommend our readers to test out the feature if it is available to them. If Wayfarer backlog is anything to go by, it may take some time to get your Route reviewed, but it should be reviewed eventually.