[Talk-us] Removing US Bicycle Route tags

KerryIrons irons54vortex at sbcglobal.net
Thu Jun 6 14:49:36 UTC 2013


Actually Paul, people have disagreed.  There are those who have taken the
position in this exchange that "Who does AASHTO think they are?"  I and
others have tried to clarify that.

 

The fact that local jurisdictions are confused and distracted by the meaning
of "proposed" means that we can reduce confusion by not tagging proposed
routes with USBR numbers.  It sounds like you want to blame those who are
confused rather than help reduce the confusion.  If we know from experience
how best to approach local jurisdictions for their approval, why would we
engage in behavior that makes more work in that process?

 

Adventure Cycling does not seek to monopolize the process, and there are a
number of states that have proceeded in gaining USBR designation on their
own.  However they do come to Adventure Cycling for advice since few states
can claim to be 'experienced" in the process.  I got involved in this
because a state group came to me and asked what was going on with a bunch of
USBRs tagged in their state on OSM about which they knew nothing.  That does
not reflect "a fundamental misunderstanding of 'proposed' on exclusively
[my] part."

 

You seem to think this sort of thing is just fine, but it creates headaches
and extra work.  Why you think it is OK that OSM would stimulate those
headaches and extra work is confusing to me.

 

I don't know what you are referencing regarding Oregon.  At this time Oregon
has stated that their priorities lie with creating their own state routes
rather than with the USBRS.  We think we have a good working relationship
with Oregon but you appear to have inside information.  Please contact me
off-list if you're willing to share.

 

 

Kerry Irons

 

 

From: Paul Johnson [mailto:baloo at ursamundi.org] 
Sent: Thursday, June 06, 2013 10:26 AM
To: OpenStreetMap talk-us list
Subject: Re: [Talk-us] Removing US Bicycle Route tags

 

On Thu, Jun 6, 2013 at 8:15 AM, KerryIrons <irons54vortex at sbcglobal.net>
wrote:

Again, a number of points of clarification are needed.

First, there is a single body in the US for assigning numbers to US Bicycle
Routes.  AASHTO owns the process, just as they do for all federal highways
in the US.  There can be any number of state and local bicycle routes,
proposed or implemented, but those are not USBRs until AASHTO approves
designation.

 

Nobody's disagreeing here except you.  Please google "define proposed",
because that's quite relevant given what you're arguing against right now.

 

There is no problem with showing these proposed routes on OSM but
tagging them with USBR numbers can create significant work for the approval
process team due to "ruffled feathers" at the local jurisdiction level.

 

Sounds like a personal problem, not a problem with the tagging.  As in,
"they're not understanding what the word proposed means."

 

You can look at the USBR corridor plan at
www.adventurecycling.org/routes-and-maps/us-bicycle-route-system/national-co
<http://www.adventurecycling.org/routes-and-maps/us-bicycle-route-system/nat
ional-corridor-plan/> 
rridor-plan/  The corridors are roughly 50 mile wide area in which a route
could be defined.  Just because a corridor exists does not mean that any
specific road/street/trail has been defined as part of the route.  On the
corridor map, a solid dark line means the route is approved by AASHTO, a
shadowed and colored line means that the corridor exists but no route is
defined, and a grey line means that a corridor could be added along that
path.  A corridor is a concept for future development of a route.  It is not
a route.

 

Nobody expects a proposed route to be the final route on the ground.  Again,
there seems to be a fundamental misunderstanding of "proposed" on
exclusively your part. 

 

As to whether the concerns I have raised are a mountain or a molehill, I
would simply say that those who want to ignore the political realities of
getting a route approved need to walk a mile in the shoes of those doing the
actual work.  Spending hours explaining why a route is not going through a
given community, even though there is a map somewhere showing that it does,
is not seen by a project team as a good use of their time.  Spending hours
trying to convince a community to accept a route when they feel it is being
shoved down their throat because it appeared on a map before they ever heard
about it is not a good way to spend time either.

 

Given how long you've been doing this, I'm surprised there's this one detail
that most people in the cycling community gets already:  That's life.  And
it's what every state goes through with their cycling community with state
bike routes.  It's what every city goes through with it's local networks.
Welcome to the world of transportation advocacy.

 

My only goal here is to keep the OSM efforts in synch with the efforts of
various USBR project teams across the US.  There is no point in creating
extra work for the project teams or for OSM mappers.

 

Nobody's putting out any information that isn't already on the table,
though.  I really can't help but to think this is more of a situation of the
ACA wanting to monopolize the process, which is something I know Oregon DOT
has criticized the ACA of in the past.  Maybe a little less ego and a little
more cooperation is in order. 

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