[talk-au] When is a road a cycle route?

Ben Kelley ben.kelley at gmail.com
Sat Dec 1 22:10:09 GMT 2012


Hi.

I think we should specify a little more what constitutes a cycle route on
the tagging guidelines.

Some background: For the cycle map layer you can tag any way as a local
cycle route (lcn=*), a regional cycle route (rcn=*) or a national cycle
route (ncn=*). The tag can be applied to the way, or a relation can be
defined. On the cycle map these ways are highlighted, and some routing
engines use this information to route cyclists differently to other
vehicles. (e.g. ridethecity.com)

In some sense, any street or path you can ride a bike on is a potential
"cycle route", but I don't think this makes it a cycle route in the OSM
sense.

I would reason that the way (streets especially) need some kind of marking
(signs, or road markings such as painted bike symbols) to indicate that the
arm of government who maintains that street has designated the street to be
a cycle route, before we mark it as a cycle route in OSM. Does that seem
reasonable?

Where it gets more complicated is when we start to think what kind of
marking we should expect to see on the ground before we say that this is a
cycle route in the OSM sense. The same applies when deciding that some
street is not really a cycle route.

Note that I am not talking about a legal definition on whether you can ride
a bike there (bicycle=yes or bicycle=no), and I am not talking about how we
tag paths/footpaths/cycleways. That is a different discussion.

How about the following cases: (bicycle=yes is true for all of these)

Some that are not cycle routes:

* Normal residential street. No road markings. No signs. No maps listing
this street as a cycle route. I would say this is not a cycle route.
* As above, but where I think this is a handy street to ride down. I would
say this is not a cycle route.
* As above, but where some other people also think this is a handy street
to ride down (and in fact I saw some just the other day). Again, not a
cycle route in the OSM sense.
* As above, but there is a council map that says this street is a cycle
route. (The map also lists other streets as cycle routes, and other streets
do have signs, but this street does not.) I have found this to be fairly
common. I would say this is not a cycle route.

Tricky ones:

* A council map says this is a cycle route, but there are no markings. In
fact the council does not use road signs or paint to mark any of its "cycle
route". This is tricky, but I would not mark this in OSM, as the
(copyright) map cannot be verified on the ground.
* A section of street that does not have any markings connects other
streets that do have markings (e.g. bike symbols painted on the road).
Cyclists commonly use this street to connect. Maps show this street as a
cycle route. This also is tricky.
* A shared use path that does not connect to any other known cycle routes.
I would probably not mark this as a cycle route, but it depends on where it
is.
* A section of road has a cycle lane (where the law requires cyclists to
ride in it), but the section of road does not connect to any other known
cycle routes. Again tricky, and it probably depends on where it is.

Easier ones:

* In states where riding on footpaths is normally not allowed, a shared use
path that connects known (marked) cycle routes. Yes this is a cycle route.
* A number of other maps show this as a cycle route. It has bikes painted
on the road. Signs every 500m saying "Cycle Route". Signs at every
intersection with a picture of a bike, and showing the destination. Yes
this is a cycle route.

I can think of more tricky edge cases, but in general I am more concerned
with whether some physical presence on the ground is required, as opposed
to "I thought this might be a nice street to ride my bike down."

 - Ben Kelley.
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