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

Ben Kelley ben.kelley at gmail.com
Sun Dec 2 20:53:26 GMT 2012


Hi.

Essentially what I'm trying to achieve are some guidelines for when
something is part of a cycle route, and when it is not. To put it another
way, what is the minimum required in order to make something a cycle route?

In the last couple of months I have seen a number of streets marked as
cycle routes where I know there is nothing on the ground to indicate the
fact. Some of these turned out to be simply copied from other maps, which
in itself is a problem, but I think it asks the question: What makes a
cycle route?

I suspect there is a little bit of tagging-for-the-routing-engine
happening. I can see the logic in "Routing engines prefer streets with rcn,
I think this is a good street to ride down, I'll tag it with rcn so that
the routing engine sends people that way," but in keeping with how we tag
things, I don't think this is the right reason to tag a street as a cycle
route.

John - I don't think a cycle lane is neither necessary or sufficient to
make something a cycle route. Note that the road rules you list there refer
to how a cyclist must behave in the presence of a bike lane sign (rather
than the presence of the lane). It is possible to have a bike lane
(cycleway=lane) with no sign, and it is possible to have the sign with no
bike lane (Park St, Sydney has this - obviously difficult to comply with
the sign in this case). Generally if someone has gone to the bother of
marking a cycle lane (with or without the sign) it is because this street
is part of a wider plan of cycle routes, but not always. I certainly think
roads with cycle lanes are a small subset of cycle routes in my area.

David - As for tagging ways vs relations, it depends a little on how the
routes are defined (usually by the local council). Generally for a
point-to-point route that goes through a number of roads and paths I make a
relation. (The M2 diversion in Sydney is an example of this.) There are
good tools for checking if there are any gaps in the relation. Some
councils have multi-connected routes, and so I think tagging the ways makes
more sense here. (e.g. Leichhardt council's local routes in Sydney.) I
don't tag multi-connected routes using a relation, as (IMHO) the different
streets are not part of the same route.

 - Ben Kelley.


On 2 December 2012 09:50, David <dbannon at internode.on.net> wrote:

> I think what you say makes sense Ben, its pretty much the default OSM
> test, can you see it on the ground ?
>
> What's not so clear to me is what you hope to achieve. Do you want to
> attach the (eg) lcn= to individual (qualifying) roads or bundle them
> together into routes ? The latter makes more sense IMHO and would be best
> done as a relation.
>
> Be good to see the outcome of your deliberations appear on the Australian
> tagging guidelines page.
>
> David
> .
>
>
> Ben Kelley <ben.kelley at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> 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.
>
>
>


-- 
Ben Kelley
ben.kelley at gmail.com
http://www.users.on.net/~bhkelley/
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