[Tagging] Can highway=cycleway be limited to MTB?

[Dave F]

And here we go again...

If a way is designated for riding a bicycle then it's a cycleway, 
irrelevant of severity or conditions.

cycleway with mtb:scale combination is a valid tag.
mtb:scale gives an indication of what equipment would probably be required.

The problem, as so often in OSM, is subjectivity.

I do the occasional off-road riding and, going on the photographs on the 
wiki, I'm damned if I can distinguish severity between them.
  mtb:scale should be expanded to include level ways as value 0 as 
locations dedicated to MTBing often have gentle routes specifically for 
beginners/children.

DaveF

On 02/04/2020 10:10, Volker Schmidt wrote:
> If a highway is mtb:scale=2 it is definitely not a cycleway. It is a
> highway=path with mtb:scale=2
> If this were to encounter a "cycleway" with mtb:scale=2 , I would consider
> this an error and retag it as highway=path without hesitation.
>
> I agree, that this is not explicitly stated in the bicycle wiki page, and
> should be added there, but I would assume that this is the common
> understanding. Anything else would cause major problems with the huge stock
> of existing highway=cycleway in OSM that have no mtb:scale tag. Routers for
> non-MTB bicycles would all need to change and evaluate the mtb:scale tag.
>
> There is already a similar problem with the OpenCycleMap rendering in the
> sense that it renders a dedicated cycle path in the same way as a path with
> bicycle=yes. This has the effect that many MTB friends have added
> bicycle=yes to "normal" hiking paths to make them appear as MTB friendly on
> the map, but also with the problem that when I look at that map I wrongly
> see a cycle paths where I would never be able to pass with my loaded
> touring bike.
>
> Please keep paths that can only be used by MTB clearly different from
> cycleways that can be used non-MTB bicycles.
>
>
>
> On Thu, 2 Apr 2020 at 10:11, Andrew Harvey <andrew.harvey4 at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> My view based on current usage, reading of the wiki and general opinion is
>> that highway=cycleway is meant for any path that is either
>> designed/intended for bicycles or specifically designated (signposted) for
>> bicycles, irrespective of if it's an urban track or mountain biking track.
>>
>> So a mountain bike track and an urban cycle track should both be tagged
>> with highway=cycleway as the primary tag. surface= and smoothness= can help
>> for both to help guide users on which kind of bicycle the track is suitable
>> for, and mtb:scale=/mtb:scale:imba= are used to indicate this is a
>> designated mountain biking track.
>>
>> highway=path is specifically for a general use / unspecified path, which a
>> mountain biking track may be if it's informal/shared, but purpose built and
>> signposted mountain bike tracks don't fall into that category.
>>
>> A similar thing applies to hiking tracks, sometimes they are designated
>> walking paths so use highway=footway + surface + sac_scale, but sometimes
>> they are just an unmarked or mixed use path so are highway=path + surface +
>> sac_scale.
>>
>> Open to other opinions or comments.
>>
>> On Thu, 2 Apr 2020 at 18:56, Phyks <phyks at phyks.me> wrote:
>>
>>> Hi,
>>>
>>> A discussion in CyclOSM issue tracker [1] spotted that there exists
>>> around 3500 highway=cycleway around the world which have specific
>>> mountain bikes (MTB) tags. In particular, around 800 highway=cycleway
>>> around the world declare a mtb:scale greater than 2, which would make
>>> them impassable without a proper mountain bike. Such cycleways would not
>>> be passable with a regular city bike. One example of such a case is at
>>> [2].
>>>
>>> Looking at the wiki page [3],
>>> "the highway=cycleway tag indicates a separate way for the use of
>>> cyclists"
>>> which does not mandate explicitly that a cycleway be accessible with any
>>> kind of bikes and should also cover dedicated paths for MTB. However,
>>> the documentation around cycleways and bike features is very oriented
>>> towards city cycling and there is no illustration about MTB-specific
>>> cycleways.
>>>
>>> So, is this considered a valid tagging or should it be represented by
>>> another highway class (path, track, etc)? If this is valid, I propose to
>>> add a statement in the wiki explicitly mentioning that cycleways can be
>>> restricted for specific kinds of bicycles, for future questions.
>>>
>>> Best,
>>>
>>> [1] https://github.com/cyclosm/cyclosm-cartocss-style/issues/208
>>> [2] https://www.openstreetmap.org/way/86978431#map=17/41.26426/-73.91907
>>> [3] https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Tag:highway%3Dcycleway
>>>
>>> --
>>> Phyks
>>>
>>> _______________________________________________
>>> Tagging mailing list
>>> Tagging at openstreetmap.org
>>> https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/tagging
>>>
>> _______________________________________________
>> Tagging mailing list
>> Tagging at openstreetmap.org
>> https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/tagging
>>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Tagging mailing list
> Tagging at openstreetmap.org
> https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/tagging

-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.openstreetmap.org/pipermail/tagging/attachments/20200402/d7d878f4/attachment.htm>