[Tagging] designated bike lane

[Greg Troxel]

I agree with the notion of not having surprises, but I think going down
the path of judgement about bike lanes being inadequate and not tagging
them is going to lead to a mess.  I lean towards saying if there is a
cycle lane painted on the road (and more or less if the road authority
says there is one), then it should be tagged as such.

Then, if it's too narrow, put a width tag (with the actual width).  If
it's in a door kill zone due to parking behing allowed next to it, add a
tag that says exactly that.  Then someone can render maps that don't
show cycle lanes with particular tags, or routers can avoid them, or
whatever else someone thinks of.  But, I think it's probably better to
show them with some danger crosshatch, or skull and crossbones, or
whatever -- my view is that the point of rendered maps is to efficiently
communicate reality to someone who hasn't yet encountered it.

By trying to objectively tag the reality (not entirely possible of
course), we also avoid all the debates about what is and isn't safe in
general, and where the dividing line is.


If part of the goal is advocacy for bike safety, then I think it makes
sense to find a cycling organization, like http://www.bikeleague.org/
and to find out what their standards are for cycle lane safety, and then
to have a scheme to represent conformance (but not tie that to "is it a
bike lane").


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