[Talk-us] USBRS WikiProject seeks volunteer mappers

[stevea]

Richard (Fairhurst):

Thank you for most informative post, sharing with us in the USA your 
experiences of national bicycle network planning and especially 
mapping in OSM.  Your "gentleness" is appreciated -- in fact, it goes 
a long way!

The USA equivalent of the UK's Sustrans (as national bicycle route 
numbering authority) is AASHTO, a non-governmental organization which 
also holds authority to number the USA's Interstate Highway system 
(our national "super-highways") as well as the century-old (or so) 
older "US Routes" highway system -- what might be called a national 
network of secondary highways next to the primary Interstates. 
Importantly, in the realm of AASHTO's "Special Committee" which 
designates Interstate, US Highways and USBR numbers, AASHTO assigns 
as proxy and/or partners with Adventure Cycling Association tasks of 
USBRS administration.  In fact, you can see Kerry Irons' name here 
http://route.transportation.org/Pages/USBicycleRoutes.aspx on 
AASHTO's web site.

Kerry (an august and respected poster here on talk-us for at least a 
couple of years) and I have been working together for over a year 
(and I even longer) to correct major mistakes in, and generally 
"brighten up" the USBRS so it now sings a vibrant harmony of what we 
(the USA) mean by "our national bicycle route system."  You can see 
the talk I gave on this topic April 13 at SOTM-US in Washington, DC 
here http://stateofthemap.us/session/us-bicycle-route-system-mapping 
.  An absolutely VITAL understanding of how OSM must not get ahead of 
routing, proposals and reality was key to this process evolving as it 
did.

Kerry and I were very sensitive to the problem of what was meant by 
"proposed routes" and our solution was to create a "high bar 
standard" before a route was even considered as a proposed route that 
might potentially enter OSM:  there has to be a "real statewide 
project" (by a statewide Department of Transportation/DOT) before OSM 
might even consider making a route relation entry (for a proposed 
USBR).  We recognized (firsthand with NE2's mess!) the dangers of 
"proposed" and we got on top of it with what we think is a very solid 
(and now well articulated) formalization.  We have been documenting 
this (and implementing it) for the better part of a year.  NOBODY in 
OSM suggests that we remove these routes -- in fact, quite the 
opposite -- I receive many hearty thanks and willing participants to 
improve the system via the "adopt-a-route" crowdsourcing methodology 
we have found to work quite well.

After my talk, Serge and Paul (Norman) had lunch with me, and while 
they said that they did not represent the DWG, in fact they actually 
did.  Serge characterized this as "If a cop pulls you over and says 
'I'm going to let you off with a warning', you don't then respond 
'But I wasn't doing anything wrong' or more apropos, 'The law is 
unclear.'"  He challenged my assertion that a USBR is a real, 
tangible thing that ought to be mapped in OSM when it doesn't have 
signs:  it can be verified (by a DOT or AASHTO or its proxy, ACA) but 
it cannot be verified ON THE GROUND if there are no signs.  I did not 
disagree with Serge, but found this assertion to be both puzzling 
(there are MANY objects in OSM which are not on-the-ground 
verifiable, like borders, some county roads and even groups of state 
highway routes) and troubling (are USBRs in danger of being deleted?) 
No mention was made at that lunch about "Import Guidelilnes" or that 
the network's entry into OSM was "an import."  That came later.

Because of contradictions in the support OSM has given to "proposed" 
from Day 1 (saying what it did on our wiki's Proposed page, since 
fuzzied and supposedly-clarified but unclearly possibly retracted by 
Fredrick's Red Triangle Warning) and the fact that mapnik/Standard 
and Cycle Map layer (OSM's #1 and #2 promoted renderers, 
respectively) clearly support "proposed" as dashed lines in numerous 
rendered outputs, my confusion rose to the level of a formal Plea for 
clarification to the DWG:  specifically regarding how OSM should 
document APPROVED routes, and how OSM should document PROPOSED routes 
(if at all).  As a reply, I was told "it's in your best interest to 
let this discussion end" and "please drop this."

I took that to mean that the nature of "Proposed" in OSM had rather 
suddenly changed (indeed, Frederick changed the Proposed wiki page 
hours later) and felt I had been stung with an "ex post facto" 
ruling.  Still, I  respectfully refrained from adding additional 
proposed routes because of this.  However, a few days ago, AASHTO 
approved ACTUAL new USBRs (not proposed ones) and I felt OK asking 
the community to help map the several hundred kilometers of work it 
would take to sync up these new members in the system with our map. 
These are ACTUAL routes:  on par with Interstate highways.  They 
likely don't have signs today, but they shall/might in the future.

And here we are.  The "similar principles" that you (Richard 
Fairhurst) suggest we follow for our USBRS here (as you did for the 
UK's NCN routes) are at least as much as we did:  we may have 
formalized it to an even greater degree than you did (no disrespect, 
sir!).  I wonder (DWG)...must Richard now follow Import Guidelines 
for the UK's NCN routes?  Did somebody have the right to remove NCN 
442 before Richard's good judgement told him "it was time" to enter 
it into OSM?  We are doing similar (and well-bolstered by sane 
reason, community support, following existing documentation before it 
is changed from under us...) here, yet somehow I feel singled out. 
To ask the same question that Martijn did earlier today, why is that?

Clarity, please, oh dear community, I continue to seek clarity.  I 
truly am trying to do the right thing(s) here.

SteveA
California