[OSM-talk] Rendering of footways with bicycle=yes

[Hillsman, Edward]

I'm one of the people mapping paths (since March) who scans this list,
and I have to say that I'm confused. Although part of that may be
because I'm new to OSM and not just to the matter of how to deal with
tagging and rendering things. And part of that may because a lot of the
tagging conventions developed in Europe, where the cycling
infrastructure is often much better than in most of the United States.

 

I got into OSM because I think it and its associated community of
spin-off applications provide the best opportunity for most communities
in the US to enable citizens to generate routes so that they can plan
trips by bicycle. The cycling infrastructure in most parts of the US is
discontinuous, poorly mapped by public agencies, and consists of a mix
of types:  shoulders along roads designated as bike lanes (no curb to
the outside); similar but undesignated shoulders that cyclists discover
but are not "official"; lanes marked within streets, often adjacent to
outside curbs, but sometimes between lanes of motor-vehicle traffic;
sidewalks (footways) parallel to major streets, which were built with
the intent of being used by cyclists; traditional sidewalks that were
not but which may be used by cyclists except where prohibited; dedicated
paths/trails built separate from the road right-of-way, which may be
used for utilitarian travel but which often are located where they are
used primarily for recreation rather than "real" trips (most of which
are designated "multi-use" and are used by cyclists and pedestrians);
and the majority of roads, which cyclists are legally entitled to use,
but which are not specially marked, and which may or may not be unsafe
to ride.

 

It is common to have cycling infrastructure on one side of a street but
not the other; some types may be safe for two-way cycling, but others,
such as shoulders and most in-street lanes, definitely are not. Where
the street is divided by a median, as in a boulevard, it is easy to code
the street as two one-way paths, code the cycling infrastructure
separately on each, and let the oneway=yes tag take care of this. Where
the street is a two-lane, two-way street with a shoulder or lane on one
side, clearly intended to be used in one direction and not the other and
no cycling infrastructure on the other side of the street, there is a
problem. This is common in Tampa, and I welcome guidance.

 

Some questions about coding:

 

I assume that highway=cycleway is a path developed outside a road
right-of-way, primarily for cycling (and the topic that you have been
discussing in this thread). The illustration on the Map Features page
lacks enough surrounding context to indicate whether the tag might be
suitable for other kinds of cycling infrastructure. If I am correct,
then what would be the difference between this and cycleway=track?

 

Cycleway=lane, the illustration shows what could either be a bicycle
shoulder or an in-street bicycle lane. These have very different
perceptual "feel" to cyclists, depending on the character of the main
road, the motor traffic on it, the volume and speed of the motor
traffic, and the geometry of the lane or shoulder. On one street here,
there is a lane (officially, "excellent" cycling infrastructure) which
most cyclists veer out of to use the shoulder instead, which at that
point is not designated as a bike shoulder, because there is a lane. If
you saw the section of street, you would understand why.

 

Cycleway=track would cover the multi-use, largely recreational,
infrastructure. It might or might not be intended for the sidewalks
intended to be used by cyclists.

 

Cycleway=opposite_lane is rare here, and in the US is probably only
suitable for low-volume streets except in areas with large numbers of
cyclists, such as Portland, Davis, or Boulder. See below.

 

Cycleway=opposite_track again might or might not be intended for the
sidewalks intended to be used by cyclists, which often are on just one
side of the street. Unfortunately, research has demonstrated these to be
dangerous when cyclists who use them against the flow of motor traffic
must cross an intersection (because drivers are not looking for them
there).

 

I have attempted to tag some of the multi-use paths as highway=footway
and as highway=cycleway, but only the most recently entered survives.
Most of the multi-use paths with which I am familiar have been entered
by others and tagged as highway=footway. What is the best way to
designate their multipurpose character? I assume add bicycle=yes.

 

Thinking ahead toward the objective of having routing algorithm
available to use this to generate bicycle routes, how can we code these
various types in ways that someone can eventually make usable routes out
of them? 

 

If you are aware of anyone developing such a routing facility to run
using data from OSM, could you refer me to him/her?

 

At the moment, many large cities in the US have no OSM mapping activity
at all, and in most of those which do, it is fragmentary. It would be
very good to get this sorted out before lots more people here become
involved.

 

Ed Hillsman

 

>On Thu, 30 Apr 2009 16:59:50 +0100, Andy Allen

>gravitystorm at gmail.com wrote:

> 

>Subject: Re: [OSM-talk] Rendering of footways with bicycle=yes

>To: Richard Mann <richard.mann.westoxford at googlemail.com>

>Cc: talk at openstreetmap.org

>Message-ID:

>     <c4193f8c0904300859w5129fc28pdbc264c08c92039f at mail.gmail.com>

>Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1

> 

>On Thu, Apr 30, 2009 at 3:10 PM, Richard Mann

><richard.mann.westoxford at googlemail.com> wrote:

>> I'd support that highway=path needs to be rendered in the cycle map
layer,

>> especially now it's becoming clearer how it's being used

> 

>Every time it gets discussed, it becomes *less* clear how it's being

>used to me. And I'm mightily concerned that the 10 people discussing

>it on these lists might be in no way representative of the 14,990

>people who are mapping paths and aren't in these discussions.

> 

>Cheers,

>Andy

 

 

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