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

Andrew Harvey andrew.harvey4 at gmail.com
Fri Apr 3 13:09:00 UTC 2020


On Sat, 4 Apr 2020 at 00:01, Joseph Eisenberg <joseph.eisenberg at gmail.com>
wrote:

> I think using leisure=track for a mountain bike path is even more
> misleading than highway=cycleway.
>
> A feature with leisure=track is usually an oval racing track for
> runners, track cyclists, or similar sports. This tag is simply not
> used for mountain bike paths;
>
> http://overpass-turbo.eu/s/Sjk - only 89 ways (including loops, like
> mtb pump tracks)
>
> By contrast, highway=cycleway + mtb=designated has been used 558
> times: http://overpass-turbo.eu/s/Sjl


And when you consider mtb:scale*=* + highway=cycleway that number goes up
to 3500 (
https://github.com/cyclosm/cyclosm-cartocss-style/issues/208#issuecomment-607633737)
so indeed it's widely occurring in the OSM database.


> Clearly many mappers consider highway=cycleway an appropriate tag for
> a designated mountain bike path.
>
> However, it's true that highway=path is used more commonly with
> mtb=yes and mtb=designated: http://overpass-turbo.eu/s/Sjo - over
> 13,000 occurences.
>
> Unfortuately only a little over half of those ways have a surface=*
> tag - adding those tags would be more productive than arguing about
> whether to use highway=cycleway or highway=path. (See
> http://overpass-turbo.eu/s/Sjp)
>

If we stick with using highway=cycleway then perhaps the solution is to
document mtb as an access mode, so mtb=designated can be used to indicate
mountain bike tracks and data consumers, routers and renders just need to
check that tag.
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