[talk-au] Tagging for "unofficial" Cycle routes in Lake Macquarie?

Steve Bennett stevagewp at gmail.com
Mon Apr 30 01:48:42 BST 2012


On Mon, Apr 30, 2012 at 10:22 AM, Ian Sergeant <inas66+osm at gmail.com> wrote:

> route from somewhere to somewhere else.  We've seen on sites like
> bikely how prolific these cycle routes can be, with around 9000 cycle
> routes crossing the Sydney area alone. We agree that it wouldn't be a

Worth pointing out that sites like bikely (last time I looked) and
gpsies don't actually show a network view, so it's hard for people to
avoid redundancies.

> good thing if there were this many cycle routes in OSM.
>
> Once we start allowing such routes, neither of us have any idea how
> the number will be contained.  You believe that this shouldn't stop
> us, because the community will work out a way if and when it becomes
> an issue, and it may never actually become an issue in OSM (with more
> sophisticated mappers than bikely :-)  I believe this is a very
> slippery slope, and we're doing the project a disservice by
> introducing unverifiable data without any guidelines for how we would
> limit its use.

That's a fair statement of our positions.

> I think we would need a broad consensus to introduce cycle routes
> based on individual preference, as well as documentation on how when

My experience of OSM is that the mental model "nothing happens until
we all agree it should happen" is inaccurate. I used to think that was
the case, mostly from experience in projects like Wikipedia. (In
Wikipedia, if people started creating articles that violated the
rules, they would just be deleted, and the users blocked.) In OSM, you
seem to get the opposite: lots of very quiet editing which would raise
a lot of eyebrows if anyone was aware of it.

An example would be the "golden route" bike route that someone added
that goes all the way from Mt Gambier (from memory?) to Castlemaine.
Whoever added it didn't ask whether it was a good idea. In retrospect,
it's not. But that's the way things are done, apparently.

> and how they would be used, and reasoning on how we can avoid the
> obvious pitfalls.  We haven't seen any of these yet.

I think responding to actual issues sometimes works better than trying
to prevent problems.

> My issue here is purely the slippery slope and verifiability.  I may
> actually prefer a cycle map produced by OSMers producing cycling maps
> by survey then the poor excuse for routes coming from "authoritative
> sources".   However, I think the best way of achieving this is to add
> the infrastructure, and rely on automation to produce preferred
> routes.  Otherwise I see it turning into a mess.

I'm still not sure how "verifiability" leads you to accept
ground-based surveys but reject authoritative published routes. (Or
maybe I just hate your conclusion, so I assume your reasoning is bad,
too.)

> Secondly, the subjective evaluation of published cycle routes.  Here I
> think I'm definitely on shakier ground, but I'd like to see a good
> solution.  There are three different levels of institutions that
> publish cycle routes.  State government authorities, local government
> authorities, and local cycling groups.  In general, I think adding
> these routes to OSM is a reasonable endeavour, however, we should

Ok - so routes published by community cycling groups (eg, Boorondara
Bicycle Users Group) are ok, but routes published by individuals (or
not published) aren't. Pretty reasonable in many cases - but what
about where areas where none of the above publish any routes at all?

> reconsider in a three circumstances.
>
> 1. Where the path or road referenced by the route doesn't exist or
> isn't accessible.  I know this sounds a little odd, but in quite a few
> cases the route is either out of date, or the infrastructure is still
> in a planning phase, or it has been removed or damaged beyond any
> utility, or it has been incorporated into private property, or signs
> and barriers on the ground exclude cyclists.  This is a direct appeal
> to the "on the ground" mantra.  The route can be defined on the
> "official" website as a cycle route, but why would be included in our
> data if you can't actually cycle on it?  To include this data on the
> basis it is "official", would seem like bloody-mindedness.

If you physically can't cycle there yet, we'd mark it proposed or
construction. eg: http://osm.org/go/uGtP3q_gd-?layers=C

If there's a public road but it lacks a planned bike lane, I'd still
put the route there.

If the route used to be cyclable but is now inaccessible (or the
signage removed or whatever), I'd probably remove it. Agreed there's
no value in including routes which aren't actually rideable.

>
> 2. Where the path or road referenced is indicated by a sign only, and
> no cycle facilities or infrastructure exist on the ground.  Quite
> simply, in Australia the existence of a bicycle sign doesn't indicate
> a route.  Map the sign if you like, by all means, but don't map a
> cycle route unless there is some other supporting evidence of a cycle
> route.

Strong disagreement from me.

> 3. At the furthest extreme, where there are no cycle facilities on a
> section of a route, the route is clearly not residential or off-road,
> and the road is no better as a route that the roads either side of it
> (not quicker, not safer, not less trafficked, not flatter) then I
> think we should consider omitting it.  If the cyclist is no worse off
> just plotting the more direct road linking two cycle route sections,
> then we're adding nothing of value.  Again, OSMs strength is current,
> on-the-ground analysis, and we should make use of it.  The official
> cycle maps are easily accessible to those who want the unabridged
> version.

Again, disagreement from me. One of OSM's strengths is visualising the
various bike routes around the place as a coherent network. IMHO there
is a lot of value in this kind of view:
http://osm.org/go/uG4NOpG-?layers=C

Suggesting people defer to the "official cycle maps" is a cop-out: OSM
strives to be better than the "official maps", so arbitrarily
excluding information doesn't make sense.

Fundamentally, I just can't see value in not showing official cycle
routes. There's two kinds of bike information we want to convey to
cyclists:
1) physical infrastructure like highway=cycleway or cycleway=lane
(indicated in the bike map by blue bordered-roads etc)
2) navigational infrastructure like route=bicycle (indicated in the
bike map by a transparent blue background)

You seem to object to including information about 2) on the basis that
it might mislead people about the presence/absence of 1). This doesn't
make sense?

Steve



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