[Talk-us] Bike route relation issues

stevea steveaOSM at softworkers.com
Mon Jan 12 02:09:03 UTC 2015


>On Sun, Jan 11, 2015 at 1:54 PM, stevea 
><<mailto:steveaOSM at softworkers.com>steveaOSM at softworkers.com> wrote:
>
>I do not agree:  again, I find no evidence (from the Oregon DOT map) 
>that bicycles are explicitly designated "legal" on I-5.  It may be 
>the case that explicit statute specifies bicycles are allowed on I-5 
>in Oregon, but this map does not explicitly do so.  Again, please 
>note that no specific "bike routes" are designated on that map, 
>either.  It simply displays some highways as Interstates and some 
>highways as containing wide shoulders or narrow shoulders.  While 
>not complaining about Oregon's DOT helping bicyclists better 
>understand where they might or might not ride a bicycle in that 
>state, I characterize these map data as "early" or "underdeveloped" 
>w.r.t. helpful "bicycle routing" by a DOT.
>
>
>Oregon and Washington allow all modes on all routes unless otherwise 
>posted.  They have to explicitly sign exclusions, and they do. 
>Here's the list for Oregon
>
><http://www.oregon.gov/ODOT/HWY/BIKEPED/docs/freeway_ban.pdf>http://www.oregon.gov/ODOT/HWY/BIKEPED/docs/freeway_ban.pdf
>
>
>And Washington:
>
><http://www.wsdot.wa.gov/bike/closed.htm>http://www.wsdot.wa.gov/bike/closed.htm

My previous post was California centric, going too far assuming for 
other states.  (And fifty-at-a-time only in certain circumstances).

A starting place (properly placed in the locus of each state, with 
perspective as a router might parse logic and build a routing set...) 
is the following:

For 100% of ways with tag highway, set bicycle legality_status = 
"legal."  (This keeps "everything still in the running.")  Now, apply 
a per-state rule (could be a table lookup, could be a smarter data 
record):

With both Washington and Oregon:
     exclude from our data set ways where helpful OSMers have tagged 
"bicycle=no"

With California:
     exclude from our data set ways tagged highway=motorway,
     add to the set cycleways and highways tagged bicycle=yes.

We are right in the middle of "fifty ways of calculating a set." 
Those target objects might be elements of a bicycle route.  As we get 
the tags right (critical, on the data and "at the bottom") we must 
also treat the rules of what we seek from those data as critical, too 
(from the top, down).  It's reaching across and shaking hands with a 
protocol, or a stack of protocols.  It's data, syntax and semantics. 
When the sentence is grammatical (tags are correct for a parser), it 
clicks into place with the correct answer (renders as we wish).

For the most part, we get it right.  But we do need to understand the 
whole stack of what we do every once in a while, and pointing out 
"data in California, treat like this, data in Oregon, Washington..., 
treat like that..." is helpful to remember.  Can we get to a place 
where everybody can do things (tag) "just right for them" and have it 
always work (render), everywhere every time?  Mmmmm, not without 
documentation and perhaps conversations like this.

This is why documenting what we do and how we do it (and referring to 
the documentation, and trying to apply it strictly, unless it breaks, 
then perhaps talk about it and even improve it...) is so important.

Listen, build, improve, repeat.  Thank you (Paul, for your specific 
answer, as well as others for participating).

SteveA
California
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