[Talk-us] Relations, cycle routes, shapefiles

[PJ Houser]

Hi all,

I have some basic questions:

1) Why are relations preferred for bike routes?
2) In the database, how do relations apply to ways? The attributes
associated with a relation - how are they tied to ways? Will routing
software use the attributes in a relation to determine if a way is suitable?
3) In Portland, Oregon, we have an interconnected series of unnamed bike
boulevards - how should we split these into relations? There are different
tiers of bike boulevards (low traffic, middle traffic, bike lane,
cycletrack, traffic calming devices but no bike lane, etc). Should we make a
relation out of all connecting and similarly tiered ways? It'd be easier to
just add attributes to the ways, but the OSM wiki seems quite clear on bike
routes as relations.
4) Do shapefiles maintain relations? I am looking into Roadmatcher and
osm2shp software. I don't want to break relations while using Roadmatcher to
conflate data.

http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Cycle_routes#United_States
"Some cities such as Eugene, Portland, Berkeley and Emeryville have a local
cycle network comprising of a grid of bicycle
boulevards<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bicycle_boulevard>and
dedicated cycleways. These bicycle boulevards and dedicated greenways
should use an LCN route relation."

Thank you!
--
PJ Houser
Trimet, GIS
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