[Talk-us] Mapping rail trails

[stevea]

Yes, thank you, Minh.  I forgot to mention the importance of using the cycle_network tag, as it can both disambiguate routes which might be named/numbered the same or similarly AND coalesce them together into a coherent collection of routes which are clearly "all members of a single network."

As our https://wiki.osm.org/wiki/Key:cycle_network wiki says, "Ideally, all route relations in a single cycleway network should be tagged with the same cycle_network=* value."  That is (rather simply) what it does.

I'd say it is typical for "government" (national-level, as in USBRS / ncn, state / rcn as well as city-county / lcn) routes to be collected together into a single cycle_network, all having the same value, like US:CA:SF for all of San Francisco's bicycle routes.  Whether RAIL-TRAIL routes are collected together into cycle_networks isn't something I know a whole lot about right now, but I am curious for more real-world data to emerge about that.  Here?  Sure.  In the map? (as in actual OSM cycle_network tagging)?  Yes, that works, too.  Try clicking that link above, then its "taginfo" link to get a flavor for how this tag is used.

SteveA