[Talk-us] Tagging and Rendering Cycle Ways

Scott Atwood scott.roy.atwood at gmail.com
Wed Nov 26 02:21:20 GMT 2008


One other thing I'd like to add:
Expressways.  Here in Santa Clara County, we have a quirky system of roads
called "Expressways", which lie somewhere between normal arterials and
freeways.  They tend to have few or no frontage driveways and a limited
 intersections.  There are some freeway style interchanges.  Pedestrians are
prohibited for the most part, but bicycles are permitted on all of them.
 Most of them have wide shoulders, and a few even have bike lanes on the
shoulders.  Some of these expressways are excellent routes for moderately
confident cyclists.  I have no idea how these expressways should be tagged
for cyclists, and any suggestions are welcome.

-Scott

On Tue, Nov 25, 2008 at 5:27 PM, Scott Atwood <scott.roy.atwood at gmail.com>wrote:

> I am an avid cyclist in the San Francisco Bay Area and I have recently
> started editing my local area in OSM.  I would like to map all the local
> bike routes and facilities, but I'm not sure of the best way to tag them in
> OSM.  Here are the different kinds of facilities I have encountered, and my
> best guess at how to tag them.
>
> Bike Lanes (a.k.a. Class II).   This one is pretty easy.  I just tag these
> as {cycleway=lane}, and they render quite nicely in the Cycle Map layer.
>  The one problem I've encountered so far is that the existing tagging scheme
> doesn't seem to handle bike lanes that are only one side of a two-way
> street.  This is not a common situation, but it does happen.  A similar
> problem would apply to sidewalks and on-street parking that are only on wide
> side of the street.  Has anyone proposed a solution to this class of
> problem?
>
> Multi-Use Paths (a.k.a. Class I).  This one is also pretty easy.  I tag
> these as {highway=cycleway, cycleway=track, foot=yes}.  However, one wrinkle
> is that these MUPs sometimes have have sections with an on-street alignment.
>  In that case, I added a relation to the entire MUP, both the off-street
> trail portions, and the on-street alignments, that was tagged like
> {route=bicycle, type=route, name=_name_of_the_MUP_}.  I intentionally left
> off the network tag from the relation, since this isn't part of a formal
> route network per se, but if anything, it would be {network=lcn}
>
> Bike Routes (a.k.a. Class III).  This one, I'm a little bit more confused
> about.  These are just streets that have "Bicycle Route" signs on them, and
> nothing more.  Often, they overlap with Bike Lanes.  They have no names or
> numbers associated with them.  I've never seen any formal map that shows
> bike lanes.  I've only ever stumbled across them while out on rides.  They
> tend to have approximately the quality of cycling conditions as Bike Lanes,
> without the stripe, of course.  But they are distinctly at the lowest tier
> of cycle facility.  I have typically been tagging these as
> {bicycle=designated}.  One of the other local cycle mappers has been tagging
> them with a relation like {route=bicycle, type=route, network=lcn}.   I'm
> not sure which is a better approach.  My tagging scheme feels more in line
> with the spirit of this type of facility, but I suspect that to date no one
> is giving this a distinct rendering. The latter scheme seems OK too, but
> perhaps implies a bit more status to these routes that feels appropriate.
>  Also, I suspect they may render even more prominently than Bike Lanes,
> which doesn't seem quite right.
>
> Local Numbered Cycle Routes.   In my local area, there is only a single
> numbered local bike route, San Jose Crosstown Bike Route 11, which I
> implemented as a relation like {network=lcn, ref=11, route=bicycle,
> type=route}.  This tagging feels about right, and renders the way I'd expect
> in the Cycle Map.
>
> Bicycle Boulevards.  To the best of my knowledge, there is only one Bicycle
> Boulevard in the local area, the Ellen Fletcher Bicycle Boulevard, on Bryant
> St. in Palo Alto.  As far as I know, no one has added the Bicycle Boulevard
> to OSM yet, and I'm not sure what the best way is.  Probably a relation is
> the best tool to use, but I feel like a Bicycle Boulevard ought to have a
> distinct rendering, since it is distinguished by lots of cyclist friendly
> features like diverters for motorists, traffic calming measures, and cyclist
> signal priority.
>
> I guess what I would really like is a richer set options to use tagging and
> rendering bike routes, besides just lcn/rcn/ncn.  To some extent, Class III
> Bike Routes, bicycle boulevards, and the on-street alignments of MUPs are
> all appropriate use cases for bicycle route relations, but to me at least,
> feel like they should be tagged and rendered distinctly from routes that are
> part of an official local cycling network.
>
> Thoughts?  Opinions?
>
> -Scott
>
> --
> Scott Atwood
>
> Cycle tracks will abound in Utopia.  ~H.G. Wells
>
>
>


-- 
Scott Atwood

Cycle tracks will abound in Utopia.  ~H.G. Wells
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