[Tagging] designated bike lane

[Steve Bennett]

On Sat, Jan 1, 2011 at 9:27 AM, Anthony <osm at inbox.org> wrote:
> Any suggestions how to tag this?
> http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/File:IMG_7491.JPG

This raises an interesting philosophical question: Does OSM map what
*we* consider to be a bike lane (or a park, or a service road, or a
tertiary highway...) or what *someone else* says it is? The latter
path is sometimes simpler and gives more consistent, objective
results: the bike lane here is clearly signed, and can simply be
marked bicycle=lane. If we take the former option, then we get
enormous amounts of debate about how to tag even a single entity, as
seen in this thread: "well, if it were more than 4 feet wide, I'd
consider it a bike path, otherwise not..."

Me, I lean towards the "someone else" for some things like bike lanes,
and the "we decide" path when there is no useful authority.

It would good to have some policy on this.

Steve