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

brad bradhaack at fastmail.com
Thu Apr 2 19:11:05 UTC 2020



On 4/2/20 10:56 AM, Dave F via Tagging wrote:
> And here we go again...
>
> If a way is designated for riding a bicycle then it's a cycleway, 
> irrelevant of severity or conditions.
>

The trouble with this is that very few trails are 'designated' for 
riding a bicycle.  They are legal for bikes, hikers, and horses. 
Cycleway is a lousy tag for a multiuse trail.  Fortunately most of the 
tagers where I ride, travel, and contribute follow my philosophy.
The proper tag is highway=path, foot=yes, horse=yes, bike=yes.

> 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
>>>>
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