[Tagging] cyclist profiles - was:Feature Proposal - RFC - value 'basic_network' - cycle_network?

[stevea]

"Around here" (California, USA...) we see the green-colored "Bike Route" sign (those words below a glyph of a bicycle) and we tag lcn=yes.  Either on the way or on the route that contain these road / path / way elements.  We call this "very loose collection of infrastructure" (not always, in fact MOST of the time, NOT a route relation, but possibly expressed that way) a "Class III" (three, 3) bike route.  (Class II is painted-on-the-road-edge cycleway=lane and Class I is highway=cycleway).  And that is INFRASTRUCTURE tagging, not necessarily route tagging (though we say it's OK if sometimes Class III routes are created  — though, importantly, the collection of those isn't known here as "a network," whether that is "basic" or by any other name).

We document this in our wiki I footnoted earlier (US Bicycle Networks), though that's USA.  But it works, "continent wide" as it were.  I don't know if Canada uses a similar (MUTCD D11-1) sign, which OSM documents as "generic" (bike route), so I'm heartened that "generic" as we call it is similar to what you propose calling "basic."  Rarely, as I might imagine here, we COULD call the collection of ways tagged with "simply" lcn=yes "a network."  A rarely again, I think, when we collect what might have once been a bunch of ways tagged lcn=yes and put that tag on a type=route relation (with route=bicycle), then it's OK to remove that tag from the individual ways.  But the majority of time (I believe, a continental OT query would dim the lights at the server farm) I wouldn't say so; we "more simply" put lcn=yes on the ways.  But I don't want to prevent you from doing so, and maybe saying "noname=yes" if/as that makes sense (I think it might) and sure, add some cycle_network=* tagging here, too, it seems a bit overdue to offer some clarity to our community.

So, do so ("utter" into OSM this concept of basic_network, and others like it), but please don't do so with network:type (=basic_network, or any other value in this sub-key of network).  Because it really, really is confusing to say this is a "type of network."  In multiple, different, ultimately confusing ways.  We (in the USA) don't think of this "collection" as a network, or only quite rarely, as here, like as the "academic exercise" I feel like I'm engaging in here and now.  You might choose to do so in Europe, that's fine by me, please use a syntax other than what is proposed.  There are some possible suggestions that have been tossed out there, I listen and consider.  Clearly, many others listen (and participate here — good!), also.

We're making sausage here, everybody.  It isn't always pretty.  It seems to me there is good progress and remains some distance to go.