Hi. Essentially what I'm trying to achieve are some guidelines for when something is part of a cycle route, and when it is not. To put it another way, what is the minimum required in order to make something a cycle route?
In the last couple of months I have seen a number of streets marked as cycle routes where I know there is nothing on the ground to indicate the fact. Some of these turned out to be simply copied from other maps, which in itself is a problem, but I think it asks the question: What makes a cycle route? I suspect there is a little bit of tagging-for-the-routing-engine happening. I can see the logic in "Routing engines prefer streets with rcn, I think this is a good street to ride down, I'll tag it with rcn so that the routing engine sends people that way," but in keeping with how we tag things, I don't think this is the right reason to tag a street as a cycle route. John - I don't think a cycle lane is neither necessary or sufficient to make something a cycle route. Note that the road rules you list there refer to how a cyclist must behave in the presence of a bike lane sign (rather than the presence of the lane). It is possible to have a bike lane (cycleway=lane) with no sign, and it is possible to have the sign with no bike lane (Park St, Sydney has this - obviously difficult to comply with the sign in this case). Generally if someone has gone to the bother of marking a cycle lane (with or without the sign) it is because this street is part of a wider plan of cycle routes, but not always. I certainly think roads with cycle lanes are a small subset of cycle routes in my area. David - As for tagging ways vs relations, it depends a little on how the routes are defined (usually by the local council). Generally for a point-to-point route that goes through a number of roads and paths I make a relation. (The M2 diversion in Sydney is an example of this.) There are good tools for checking if there are any gaps in the relation. Some councils have multi-connected routes, and so I think tagging the ways makes more sense here. (e.g. Leichhardt council's local routes in Sydney.) I don't tag multi-connected routes using a relation, as (IMHO) the different streets are not part of the same route. - Ben Kelley. On 2 December 2012 09:50, David <dban...@internode.on.net> wrote: > I think what you say makes sense Ben, its pretty much the default OSM > test, can you see it on the ground ? > > What's not so clear to me is what you hope to achieve. Do you want to > attach the (eg) lcn= to individual (qualifying) roads or bundle them > together into routes ? The latter makes more sense IMHO and would be best > done as a relation. > > Be good to see the outcome of your deliberations appear on the Australian > tagging guidelines page. > > David > . > > > Ben Kelley <ben.kel...@gmail.com> wrote: > > Hi. > > I think we should specify a little more what constitutes a cycle route on > the tagging guidelines. > > Some background: For the cycle map layer you can tag any way as a local > cycle route (lcn=*), a regional cycle route (rcn=*) or a national cycle > route (ncn=*). The tag can be applied to the way, or a relation can be > defined. On the cycle map these ways are highlighted, and some routing > engines use this information to route cyclists differently to other > vehicles. (e.g. ridethecity.com) > > In some sense, any street or path you can ride a bike on is a potential > "cycle route", but I don't think this makes it a cycle route in the OSM > sense. > > I would reason that the way (streets especially) need some kind of marking > (signs, or road markings such as painted bike symbols) to indicate that the > arm of government who maintains that street has designated the street to be > a cycle route, before we mark it as a cycle route in OSM. Does that seem > reasonable? > > Where it gets more complicated is when we start to think what kind of > marking we should expect to see on the ground before we say that this is a > cycle route in the OSM sense. The same applies when deciding that some > street is not really a cycle route. > > Note that I am not talking about a legal definition on whether you can > ride a bike there (bicycle=yes or bicycle=no), and I am not talking about > how we tag paths/footpaths/cycleways. That is a different discussion. > > How about the following cases: (bicycle=yes is true for all of these) > > Some that are not cycle routes: > > * Normal residential street. No road markings. No signs. No maps listing > this street as a cycle route. I would say this is not a cycle route. > * As above, but where I think this is a handy street to ride down. I would > say this is not a cycle route. > * As above, but where some other people also think this is a handy street > to ride down (and in fact I saw some just the other day). Again, not a > cycle route in the OSM sense. > * As above, but there is a council map that says this street is a cycle > route. (The map also lists other streets as cycle routes, and other streets > do have signs, but this street does not.) I have found this to be fairly > common. I would say this is not a cycle route. > > Tricky ones: > > * A council map says this is a cycle route, but there are no markings. In > fact the council does not use road signs or paint to mark any of its "cycle > route". This is tricky, but I would not mark this in OSM, as the > (copyright) map cannot be verified on the ground. > * A section of street that does not have any markings connects other > streets that do have markings (e.g. bike symbols painted on the road). > Cyclists commonly use this street to connect. Maps show this street as a > cycle route. This also is tricky. > * A shared use path that does not connect to any other known cycle routes. > I would probably not mark this as a cycle route, but it depends on where it > is. > * A section of road has a cycle lane (where the law requires cyclists to > ride in it), but the section of road does not connect to any other known > cycle routes. Again tricky, and it probably depends on where it is. > > Easier ones: > > * In states where riding on footpaths is normally not allowed, a shared > use path that connects known (marked) cycle routes. Yes this is a cycle > route. > * A number of other maps show this as a cycle route. It has bikes painted > on the road. Signs every 500m saying "Cycle Route". Signs at every > intersection with a picture of a bike, and showing the destination. Yes > this is a cycle route. > > I can think of more tricky edge cases, but in general I am more concerned > with whether some physical presence on the ground is required, as opposed > to "I thought this might be a nice street to ride my bike down." > > - Ben Kelley. > > > -- Ben Kelley ben.kel...@gmail.com http://www.users.on.net/~bhkelley/
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