[Tagging] cycle hierarchy

Volker Schmidt voschix at gmail.com
Thu Oct 3 08:10:54 UTC 2013


> How am I supposed to do that? The requirements for cyclists and motorized
> vehicles are vastly different. Even stronger, the very fact that something
> is a good long-distance route for motorists would often make it a worse
> candidate for cyclists,
>

This is exactly why you should not tag explicitly the level of suitability
for bicycles, but the properties of the road. Typically, but not always it
is true that the more a road is suitable for cars the less it is for
cyclists (except for racing cycles).


> but probably not with cycle tracks or cycle lanes.
>

Inherently my "rule"  does not apply to dedicated cycle-ways, which should
be prioperly labeled with their properties (width, surface, smoothness,
lanoe or cycleway, shared with pedestrians, ecc)

Still that leaves us with a bunch of roads with cycle lanes, tertiary,
> unclassified and residential roads and cycleways where local knowledge is
> the only way to choose between them.
>

... and this local knowledge can not be easily replaced by any kind of
algorithm.

I have experience in finding good routes for touring cycling in areas that
I do not know. I do this on the computer using all available means, of
which the best is a combination of OCM, satellite photos, and Google
StreetView, where available. But the best planning in this way cannot match
local knowledge. And then it is a question of personal preference, what you
consider a nice cycle route is for one person to go from one pub to the
next and for another form one old castle to the next. And you need
experience in reading maps.
That's why there are so man web sites that publish users' GPX tracks. You
cannot put that into the map. You can only put the objective properties in
the map, including trailblazed routes, on the map.
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