Re: [Talk-GB] highway=trunk

[Ian Spencer]

Jim Avery wrote on 25/08/2010 12:36: Personally I think that explicitly tagging roads which are already by definition cycle-legal as bicycle=yes would be too onerous and not entirely helpful. There are quite a few roads which are legal but lethal for cyclists. I think the current advice under the heading "Bicycle Restrictions" on http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Bicycle is the most pragmatic approach. I don't know anything about how OSM maps get translated to GPS routable maps - I would guess that the most important thing is to be consistent in our tagging and let the lovely people who make the routable GPS maps translate them as they feel appropriate. Anecdotally I'm finding that the better I tag the official cycle routes and lanes around where I live, the more likely it is that my GPS will route me on a reasonably pleasant way (not using Velomap here - thanks for the tip though, I'll take a look at that one too). I think "already by definition cycle-legal" is the very point I am querying. The trouble with the Bicycle restrictions section is that it falls at the first hurdle as nobody seems to have defined (on an international basis remember) whether the use of trunk implies bicycle=yes or no. I wouldn't want to cycle on the A42 (perceived as a motorway), I have cycled along dual carriageways around Redditch which are the same in OSM but quite different in quality. The problems of an administrative definition rather than a "on the ground" definition even though unless there is explicit sign-age there is a legal right. Anyhow German user perceives the answer to the implied status of bicycle as an obvious no, a UK user perceives it as an obvious yes, and the reader of the documentation perceives it as an obvious undefined. :) That strikes me as fundamentally broken. Given that trunk roads are essentially complete, default tagging should not be onerous. Spenny

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