[Tagging] Tagging cycleways to distinguish them from combined cycle and footways

[Jeroen Hoek]

On 03-08-2022 12:43, Jens Glad Balchen wrote:
> The objection to tagging correct foot=* values is that OSM contributors 
> in general are not able to or do not have the knowledge to do this 
> correctly. The problem today is that foot=* does not accurately reflect 
> the legal status. In that respect, if people tag with a traffic sign, it 
> is likely that there will be conflicting foot=* values. E.g. 
> traffic_sign=NO:520 + foot=designated. Map makers would have to chose 
> which tag to believe.
> 
> It is likely that only highway code afficionados will tag with 
> traffic_sign, and only bother to tag where traffic_sign=NO:520, since 
> traffic_sign=NO:522 would be the implied state. Therefore, I expect the 
> number of conflicts to be low. For the same reason, it also has a high 
> chance of surviving edits.
> On the other hand, maintenance will be equally low.

That's solved by presets though. In the Netherlands mappers who deal 
with cycleways quickly picked up on the presets, and eventually you just 
hit F3 + '522' and get the correct preset for '522: Gang- og sykkelveg' 
(I do so for Dutch cycleways with 'G11' etc., and because those traffic 
sign codes are part of each preset title, this just works).

The data gets richer, because data consumers who care about access 
values use foot=*, and data consumers who want to visualize cycling 
infrastructure would use traffic_sign.

It has an additional benefit: any cycleway that lacks a traffic_sign tag 
is either a special case without signs (de facto cycleways), or is 
simply missing tags. With presets, you can easily fix them by just 
selecting the prefix, and have it enter foot=* and traffic_sign=* for 
you. Much less thinking needed: just basic knowledge of what those 
traffic signs are called.