[Tagging] Tagging for streets with sharrows?

[Nathan Edgars II]

On Wed, Aug 18, 2010 at 6:51 PM, Dave F. <davefox at madasafish.com> wrote:
>  On 18/08/2010 05:33, Alan Millar wrote:
>> I agree.  The "highway" tag always designates the primary usage.
>
> I absolutely disagree with that statement.
>
> The highway tag is used to define the *classification* of a way, not the
> "primary" usage, whatever that means.
>
> For instance, in the UK you could have highway=trunk. Motorized vehicles,
> bicycles & pedestrians are all allowed to use that way. Even though cars
> maybe the majority users, they *all* have equal rights to use it.

A better example would be a cul-de-sac that provides access to one
driveway and the end of a popular bike trail. Even though there will
be more bikes than cars using the road, we still tag it
highway=residential. (It's also worth noting Alan's unstated
assumption that most values of highway imply motor vehicle use; in
reality most of the specific values are geared towards importance in a
motor vehicle network, but none of them says anything about the
primary use.)

Perhaps it's best to think of the cycleway tag as a newspeak term for
anything cycle-related, whether properly called a cycleway. A street
with an unmarked narrow strip becomes a cycleway=lane when signs are
posted or symbols are painted. A street becomes a cycleway=sharrow
when symbols are painted. It might have been better had we used cycle
rather than cycleway as the tag, but we're probably stuck.