Hi.<br><br>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?<br>
<br>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?<br>
<br>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.<br>
<br>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.<br>
<br>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.<br>
<br> - Ben Kelley.<br><div class="gmail_extra"><br><br><div class="gmail_quote">On 2 December 2012 09:50, David <span dir="ltr"><<a href="mailto:dbannon@internode.on.net" target="_blank">dbannon@internode.on.net</a>></span> wrote:<br>
<blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex">I think what you say makes sense Ben, its pretty much the default OSM test, can you see it on the ground ?<br><br>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.<br>
<br>Be good to see the outcome of your deliberations appear on the Australian tagging guidelines page.<span class="HOEnZb"><font color="#888888"><br><br>David<br>.</font></span><div class="im HOEnZb"><br><br>Ben Kelley <<a href="mailto:ben.kelley@gmail.com" target="_blank">ben.kelley@gmail.com</a>> wrote:<br>
<br>Hi.<br><br>I think we should specify a little more what constitutes a cycle route on the tagging guidelines.<br><br>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. <a href="http://ridethecity.com" target="_blank">ridethecity.com</a>)<br>
<br>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.<br><br>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?<br>
<br></div><div class="im HOEnZb">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.<br>
<br></div><div class="HOEnZb"><div class="h5">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.<br>
<br>How about the following cases: (bicycle=yes is true for all of these)<br><br>Some that are not cycle routes:<br><br>* 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.<br>
* As above, but where I think this is a handy street to ride down. I would say this is not a cycle route.<br>* 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.<br>
* 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.<br>
<br>Tricky ones:<br><br>* 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.<br>
* 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.<br>
* 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.<br>* 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.<br>
<br>Easier ones:<br><br>* 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.<br>* 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.<br>
<br>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."<br>
<br> - Ben Kelley.<br><br clear="all"><br>
</div></div></blockquote></div><br><br clear="all"><br>-- <br>Ben Kelley<br><a href="mailto:ben.kelley@gmail.com">ben.kelley@gmail.com</a><br><a href="http://www.users.on.net/~bhkelley/">http://www.users.on.net/~bhkelley/</a><br>
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