[OSM-talk-be] way Diest - Geel

[Ben Laenen]

Bart Vanherck wrote:
> I think I was a little bit to fast.
> 
> It is about
>  http://www.openstreetmap.org/edit?lat=51.0466&lon=5.0184&zoom=13
> 
> The street is called Diestsebaan between Diest and Veerle-Laakdal. The
> way is also tagged as cycleway. Because I use josm the way was drawn as
> a cycleway. In the online editor everything looks correct.
> 
> Is it not better to have a seperate way as lane for bikes ? If I am not
> mistaken the lane is seperated from the road by trees, but I am not sure
> there.

Opinions vary on that. Some people only want extra tags on the main highway, 
other people want all cycleways as separate ways next to them, even those 
painted on the road. I'm somewhere in the middle on that one (I need some sort 
of division between cycleway and the road before considering it, and then it 
really depends on the situation).

To tag as a separate way though needs pretty detailed mapping, so you'd need 
traces from the cycleway to map it correctly, especially at junctions, and 
then there are the points where you can go from the road to the cycleway. So 
it needs much work as well (although I've seen several cycleways that were 
just drawn as parallel ways and are missing any connection with the rest of 
the road network, ignoring junctions and everything -- I tend to just delete 
them as they serve no purpose at all other than telling there is a cycleway, 
and it's better to use a tag for that). So in this case cycleway=track is a 
good way to tell that there's a cycleway, but that we lack the data that says 
where it is exactly.

Ben