[talk-au] Practicality of mapping high-speed motor-traffic routes as cycle routes

[Andrew Harvey]

Hi Dongchen,

In my view route=bicycle should be used where signage indicates a "route"
through one or more connecting paths, so that includes:

1. The white painted bicycle stencils on the road with directional arrows
indicating the suggested route for bicycles. These are common on quiet
residential roads, but often don't have a route name or other signposts.
2. Blue/white signposts with a bicycle icon, usually with the suburb name
that the route is heading to sometimes with a distance number

Then you'll also see suggested routes published in various maps, where
either governments or other bodies suggest as good routes but have nothing
on the ground.

I think it's quite clear that 1 and 2 should be mapped as bicycle=route, 3
I would generally say no with some exceptions.

This should be irrespective of subjective opinions like safety,
pleasantness, etc. those things are hard to make verifiable in an objective
way, see also https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Verifiability. This isn't
a hard rule, but for example a "safety index" tag isn't a good tag for this
reason.

A number of motorways in Sydney like the M5, M7, M2 have signage for
bicycles, painted bicycle icons in the shoulder and specific crossings for
bicycles at exit/entry ramps, whether this together constitutes a route or
simply just some kind of bicycle infrastructure isn't clear, but I'd lean
towards mapping them as routes because of all this signage (they even go so
far as signposting detour routes when sections of the motorway need to be
closed due to construction, this happen in the last year or so for the M2,
so based on this I'd say they should count as bicycle routes).

Any good bicycle routing engine out there will take into account the
highway classification plus a range of other tags to determine suitability,
so a routing engine for family friendly rides would quite easily choose to
avoid highway=motorway, regardless of route=bicycle or cycleway=lane or not
on the motorway. If you want a bicycle map which is family friendly again
it's easy to exclude highway=motorway, that should be a routing/rendering
decision, not a data decision since data should map what's on the ground
https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Good_practice#Map_what.27s_on_the_ground
.

I disagree that bicycle routes are only ever for family friendly routes,
many people do use these motorway cycleways they can be faster and more
efficient ways of getting from A to B.

In my opinion they are cycleway=lane due to them being separated from
vehicles by paint and designated for bicycles due to the white painted
bicycle symbols + dedicated exit/entry ramp crossings.

On Mon, 13 Apr 2020 at 18:20, Dongchen Yue <yuedongchenyy at gmail.com> wrote:

> Hi all,
>
> I’ve noticed many motorway shoulders in Australia (especially in Sydney)
> being mapped as cycle routes on OSM. Although this seems to be a common
> approach for motorways/other high-speed roads in Australia of which cycling
> is allowed on, I can hardly imagine it to be of any practical use (i.e.
> providing convenient and safe connections for people cycling).
>
> Foremostly, this mapping approach defies the general purpose of cycle
> routes (both from an engineering perspective and the official OSM Wiki),
> that is, guiding people onto safe & convenient ways. Although cycling on
> most motorway shoulders in Australia is technically permitted and commonly
> done by the very few “strong and fearless” people (only ~1%, as indicated
> in past transport research), it’s both subjectively and statically quite
> unsafe, which gives no use to most people when rendered on tiles such as
> OpenCycleMap.
>
> Also, these mapped motorway/high-speed road routes aren’t officially
> endorsed routes whatsoever, and are always referred to as separate pieces
> of infrastructure (e.g. “… cycleway”) by cycle-lobbying groups.
> Afterall, these “routes” probably shouldn’t be mapped at all, since they
> aren’t much use to most people; tagging them with ‘cycling’: ‘designated’
> and ‘cycleway’: ‘shoulder’ would be sufficient enough. What do you think of
> this solution?
>
> Thanks in advance,
> Dongchen Yue
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> Talk-au at openstreetmap.org
> https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-au
>
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