[Talk-GB] Cycling in Parks

[Andy Townsend]

On 13/01/2021 13:33, Steven Hirschorn wrote:
> I have two parks near me that are almost adjoining. I believe they
> apply the same bylaws, which prohibit cycling. However, I've not heard
> of the bylaw being enforced and the local council are trying to
> encourage cycling so I believe it wouldn't be enforced unless combined
> with anti social behaviour (and I've heard similar from someone who
> would know).
>
> One park previously had all its paths marked as highway=cycleway and
> the other as highway=footway, bicycle=yes.

"=yes" would imply a legal right of access, which doesn't sound correct 
here.


> highway=cycleway seems to
> be too strong as they are not designated cycle paths. highway=footway
> would not permit bikes at all. Combining a footway with bicycle=yes or
> bicycle=permissive seems the right balance to me of de jure and de
> facto rules,
... and to me, perhaps with a note saying that while cycling is de jure 
prohibited it is actually de facto permitted (or even encouraged)
> but I'm not sure of the impact on rendering (I know not
> to tag for the renderer)

Different renderers will I'm sure do different things.  There are a 
number of cycle maps around, and I'd hope they'd all show 
"bicycle=permissive" as "somewhere that you can cycle", but I've never 
seen a good summary of exactly what will appear as what comparing 
various cycle maps (though some will have legends of course).


> or on a cycle routing engine.

again, depends on the router - in a perfect world I'd expect it to be 
routable but with a penalty compared to a "real" cycleway. You can test 
this yourself at osm.org - using taginfo and overpass, find a 
"highway=footway; bicycle=permissive" that has been that way for a while 
and see if either of the two bicycle routers available from osm.org 
route over it,

Best Regards,

Andy