[Talk-us] United States Bicycle Route System ballots pending AASHTO approval

[Kerry Irons]

Bradley,

All I can say about Tong Rd. is that this is the recommended route from El Dorado County, and that RideWithGPS recognizes it as accessible.  Not to say that RWGPS is infallible, but the fact that Strava heatmap shows regular usage is a strong indication that it is indeed open.

I'm not familiar with how the "private road" concept is implemented in California, but in Michigan I know that unless posted with something like "closed to public" private roads are treated as open to the public.

The eastbound route goes to the ramps on Lincoln Hwy to make a U-turn onto NB Silva Valley Pkwy and then onto Tong.


Kerry

-----Original Message-----
From: Bradley White <theangrytomato at gmail.com> 
Sent: Thursday, April 9, 2020 5:08 PM
To: Kerry Irons <irons54vortex at gmail.com>
Cc: OpenStreetMap talk-us list <talk-us at openstreetmap.org>
Subject: Re: [Talk-us] United States Bicycle Route System ballots pending AASHTO approval

Completed Placerville to Folsom - couple questions.

Is the suggested segment along Tong Road accessible to the public?
It's a recommended "neighborhood connector" according to the Western El Dorado County Bike Map and appears to see decent traffic according to Strava heatmap, but the parcel map for El Dorado County doesn't show it as a right-of-way, and the old (probably out of date!) California Cross State Bicycle Route Study says that the roadway has been gated off and was under investigation as to whether it was open to the public or not. Signage at the end of Old Bass Lake road seems to suggest the road is private (street view with that-which-shall-not-be-named), but I have often seen these signs up along a road where the land around the road is private but the road itself is a public ROW.

Also, there is no physical crossing to turn EB from Silva Valley Pkwy onto Tong Rd - one would be required to either dismount in the middle of the road and walk, or bunny hop up over the median crossing four lanes of traffic. There are also no crosswalks to circumnavigate the barrier anywhere around. I have added a crossing here as a footway with crossing_ref=none but this seems dubious to me and difficult to tag appropriately.