[Talk-ca] A message aimed more at Ottawa

[OSM Volunteer stevea]

Hello talk-ca:  I'm resurrecting a month-old thread (about bicycling) as my initial post here.

I'm a California-based (USA) nearly nine-year veteran of OSM.  My wiki user page at https://wiki.osm.org/wiki/User:Stevea shares some details of my mapping, including parks and other mostly-natural/leisure areas, bicycle infrastructure and route mapping (I spoke on the topic at SOTM-US in Washington, DC in 2014) and national rail infrastructure and passenger train mapping (ditto, at SOTM-US in Seattle in 2016).

Regarding bicycle (infrastructure, route) mapping in OSM, I'll share that I have much to say, trying to be brief for now.  I contribute to and help coordinate harmonious growth of our wiki pages https://wiki.osm.org/wiki/United_States/Bicycle_Networks and https://wiki.osm.org/wiki/WikiProject_U.S._Bicycle_Route_System.  Some of what I have learned from a national scope perspective (in the USA) follows and I hope those in Canada may find it helpful.

In any effort to improve bicycle infrastructure in OSM, first map with highway:cycleway, cycleway:lane/track and bicycle:* tags.  Then, assemble any route=bicycle relations out of those infrastructure elements.  This order isn't strictly required, but it can help you stay sane and any wider effort (and OSM is) to remain well-coordinated.  Should routes already exist, assure they are harmonized within a wide community (in OSM, at a national level, after consulting with provincial and wide-area groups or non-profits) before progressing to fully standardizing on what are meant by values of network=* tags.  To resolve ambiguities, the cycle_network=* tag can be your good friend, its wiki now sketches sane values for Canada.  Better, more sharply focussed values can emerge with more consensus, taginfo can track both staid stability and new emergences.

Regarding network=* tags, there may be some friction and/or ambiguity in Canada with what in the USA we distinguish as "quasi-national," "quasi-private" and "private" bicycle routes.  These can be difficult to map onto existing bicycle route tagging schemas (especially network=*).  Please be welcome to use history of how these emerged in the USA (between about 2011 and 2014) to achieve a similar harmony in Canada.  From what I see so far, Canada does well as bicycle routes emerge in OSM:  lots of work is yet to do, but tender shoots of early- to mid-life bicycle route mapping look great from here!

There have been many initiatives to "better map bicycling" using existing OSM data and tagging (e.g. https://mapzen.com/blog/bike-map-v2, though, alas, Mapzen disappears :-( in a few days) with "comfort level," "suitability" and "safety" approaches using existing tags to semantically extrapolate those as color-coded renderings.  There have also been attempts to introduce new tagging schemas into OSM which have similar goals:  https://wiki.osm.org/wiki/Cheltenham_Standard and https://wiki.osm.org/wiki/CycleStreets (with HTML5 web, iOS and Android implementations) come to mind.  Many overlays/renderers (Andy Allan's OpenCycleMap, Sarah Hoffman's waymarkedtrails.org and its excellent mountain biking overlay — a whole 'other animal compared to "road route" bicycling, Simon Poole's bicycle router, our very own and excellent https://wiki.osm.org/wiki/Bicycle_tags_map...) are quite helpful:  there are a lot of resources out there.  Better tagging, better rendering, better routing and better data all continue to emerge, especially as these resources are more widely consulted and used around the world.

My apologies if any of this seems basic, I'd dislike seeing anybody re-invent wheels when so much good work has been done in OSM regarding bicycling, bicycle routing and bicycle mapping in the context of improving "ride ability" or "bicycle usability."  I wish the very best to Canadian OSMers in doing so!

Regards,
SteveA
OSM Volunteer since 2009