[Tagging] Wild changes to wiki pages changing the cycleway tagging scheme

[Richard Fairhurst]

Andrew Davidson wrote:
> As you've actually consumed the data I'm interested to know what 
> problems you have found

The bit of my routing profile that parses cycleway tags has a big 
"Abandon hope all ye who enter here" sign hanging over it and I try not 
to revisit it too often. ;)

cycleway=opposite is one of the most misnamed tags in OSM. It doesn't 
appear to mean "cycleway", it means bikes can use the road. It doesn't 
appear to mean "opposite", it means contraflow, i.e. proceed against 
(motor) traffic. Apart from that, it's brilliant.

oneway:bicycle=no is nice and unambiguous. Mapping that onto the 
scenario where there's a painted lane for contraflow cycling, but not 
for with-flow, is complex. My preferred accompanying tag would be 
cycleway:backward=lane, but that's rarely used.

> as I think that this is one thing that is missing from most tagging
> debates on this list. It's all very nice to have the world's greatest
> tagging scheme but it's useless if no one can consume it at the end.
Fully agree, and I really do wish people wouldn't try to second-guess 
what's useful for data consumers. As a recent example I would offer up 
https://lists.openstreetmap.org/pipermail/tagging/2019-March/043991.html 
where the second paragraph provoked in me a reaction roughly analogous 
to https://tenor.com/view/it-crowd-moss-computer-throw-gif-5404468 ...

Richard