[Talk-us] US Bicycle Routes in KY, TN, AL, MS, and GA

[stevea]

I just want to chime in that "we" (the People of our county:  partly 
by Citizen participation, partly by presentations to our county 
Regional Transportation Commission) find the visualizations that OSM 
affords us an excellent way to posit proposed bicycle 
routing/numbering using the "state=proposed" tag.  These (local 
cycleway networks and numbering) display as dashed lines, and 
everybody already understands what dashed lines mean:  routes are 
proposed, and one should not expect to find numbered signs on the 
ground -- yet.

If/as these proposed routes are (slowly, to allow public debate and 
signage to be funded) accepted by the various city/county 
jurisdictions involved, OSM contributors simply remove the 
"state=proposed" tag, and the route's visual semiotics in OSM go from 
dashed line to solid line.  This seems (is?) an excellent way to both 
"posit, visualize and discuss routes and numbering before they exist" 
and to "assert routes are real after political process."  OSM acts as 
a sort of ready-made solution to the problem of discussing something 
both geographic and public debate-oriented, and after all is said and 
done, OSM ends up a win-win all around.

Santa Cruz County in California has a wholly public-contributed 
bicycle numbering protocol as a proposal before it right now 
(colloquially known as "CycleNet"), and OSM's Cycle Map layer is the 
best way that exists to visualize it.  This works on wider than just 
a local level, as a Caltrans (California DOT) regional guy I'm in 
contact with said he is "watching" this proposal unfold so that 
something similar may be deployable on a statewide level.  (Should 
California ever get its act together regarding statewide bicycle 
routing, something I've gotten dead-end answers about from 
Sacramento:  Penny Gray, are you reading?).

So, OSM as a bicycle route/numbering visualization method is real, it 
is happening (at a local and regional level), and it seems to be 
accepted as a powerful tool for discussion of the actual routes and 
numbering under proposal.  This certainly can be similarly true on a 
national level.  All that is needed is some wider/continuing sensible 
discussion of how we intend to and actually use the map and its 
ingredients.

Cheers,

SteveA
Santa Cruz, California