Full disclosure - I’m currently working for London Cycling Campaign on a project to bring data from the Transport For London Cycling Infrastructure Database to OSM.
As part of this the question arose as to how to tag cycle facilities that are give more protection and comfort than a painted lane on the road but not as much as a fully protected lane with, say, a 50cm concrete kerb separating cyclists from motor traffic. This was raised here - https://github.com/cyclestreets/tflcid-conversion/issues/23 <https://github.com/cyclestreets/tflcid-conversion/issues/23> There are may types of ‘hybrid’, ‘partial, or ‘soft’ separation. The London COVID-19 ‘StreetScape’ programme is bring a lot of this type of infrastructure to London’s streets very quickly. Looking at OSM Wiki and previous discussions it doesn’t appear that there is a definitive way to record these. And indeed, looking at the recent infrastructure and how it has been entered to OSM by users it is not happening consistently as a result. My view on this is that the greatest distinction is between a painted lane and a track (that has some form of protection). The difference between the different types of track is less than between no protection at all and ’something’. Given the multitude of different ways of giving some protection to cyclists I wonder whether it is better to treat them all as variants of track (since they all offer much greater protection than a lane but vary in comfort level - in my view in this order of comfort). cycleway:track=kerb cycleway:track=rubber_kerb_wand cycleway:track=rubber_kerb cycleway:track=concrete_barrier cycleway:track=plastic_barrier cycleway:track=stepped cycleway:track=wandorca cycleway:track=wand cycleway:track=orca There may be more I've forgotten. This would mean that routing engines would see either lane or track at the basic level, but the routing engine designer could then add further refinement using info about the type of track (in combination perhaps with the size/speed of the road it was alongside) if that info was available. The detail of the precise type of infra is relevant (rather than just simply tagging these with a generic tag such as ‘part protected’ or ‘hybrid’ since it may be that some types of infra prove more successful or have safety issues and there is a desire to identify locations where they are present (eg the concrete or water filed barriers prevent informal crossing of the road by pedestrians) Since this infra is being rolled out quickly and in volume (both in London and internationally - though London, due to the fragmented local authorities seems to be doing it in far more varied ways than other places) there is a benefit to establishing this now
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