[Tagging] Feature Proposal - RFC - value 'basic_network' - cycle_network?

[stevea]

On Nov 29, 2021, at 3:35 AM, Peter Elderson <pelderson at gmail.com> wrote:
> Another maybe interesting user story from Belgium. Most cities have their own version of a preferred cycling network. Here is Antwerpen, where the whole thing is mapped as one relation of type route, with 1200+ members. It's tagged network=rcn even though the whole thing is within the city limits. 
> The same area has a cycling Node network with its own signposting system, though often they use the same pole to carry the different shields. There are many more junctions with guideposts than there are labeled Nodes, but all the labeled Nodes are also regular junctions with destination based direction indicators.

Peter, thank you for this example!

As you say "It's tagged network=rcn even though the whole thing is within the city limits," I think one thing that we CAN agree upon is that the "rcn" value (of network) is perhaps the most flexible among the current values.  In the USA, we know this, too, and while rcn is usually "one USA state," it could also be smaller or larger.  In the case of the Antwerpen example, at over a half-million people, it is a (medium-to-large sized) city.  So, we shouldn't let this seem terribly unusual, especially with rcn.

Yes, for icn, I think most (everybody?) agrees those routes tagged with that network value should "cross into at least two or more countries" — little to no disagreement there.  For ncn, those should be "national" (or "national scope"), leaving this a bit fuzzy, but not too much so.  And lcn could be a city, a county, a university campus, a lot of different things, similar to the flexibility already built-in to rcn, but "more local."  Especially in the context of "other rcn routes" and "other ncn routes" in the "parent" region and nation for that locality.  That's why these routes and networks leave so much discretion to the "carving up of the namespace" within cycle_network=*, because they really are so very different in any country (and its regions and localities).

The lack of specificity with these is a major reason that cycle_network=* was invented, to specify exactly WHICH network a cycle route belongs to.