[OSM-talk] Non-designated cycleway vs. designation info missing

[Roy Wallace]

On Sat, Aug 15, 2009 at 11:38 PM, Martin
Koppenhoefer<dieterdreist at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>>> Bicycle=signed is IMHO not the best idea, because what do you do for
>>> official or designated _and_ signed ways?
>>
>> As I mentioned before, you would have to change the syntax to
>> something more like bicycle:designated=* and bicycle:official=*,
>> bicycle:signed=*, etc. Alternatively, change the tag definitions so
>> that the issue doesn't occur, or make one imply the other(s) - e.g.
>> signed implies official implies designated (we do already have
>> "'official' is stronger than 'designated'", so the latter is more or
>> less already true).
>
> doesn't this break the key-left-value-right-scheme? (Maybe not an
> issue as this is done for other tags as well). What would the values
> be? "yes" and "no"? Or could it be bicycle:official=signed?
> bicycle:official=permissive for the case of customary law?

Well yes, bicycle should be on the right, and yes, values of "yes" and
"no". If you want bicycle on the right, I would propose using:
access:designated:vehicle=bicycle;yes/no,
access:official:vehicle=bicycle;yes/no, etc. This scheme would be
quite extensible (e.g. access:maxspeed:weather=wet;40).

>>> Also I didn't get the difference of designated and official. Maybe you
>>> can explain? I thought it was intended for the same situation.
>>
>> Please see the wiki.
>
> actually for designated you don't get a stable consensus on the
> meaning, the page changes from time to time the meaning so the meaning
> might be different according to when the mapper last looked it up in
> the wiki.

Yeah...contradiction within the wiki is something that needs to be fixed.

>> Eventually I gathered that official is what you
>> think it means, whereas designated is more of a "recommendation" as in
>> "this way is designed for *". The wiki definition makes only vague
>> references to "signs", but then the examples all heavily reference
>> signage. This IMHO is confusing.
>
> this is due to the change in meaning. An older Version stated: "This
> tag indicates that a route has been specially designated (typically by
> a government) for use by a particular mode (or modes) of transport.
> The specific meaning varies according to jurisdiction. It may imply
> extra usage rights for the given mode of transport, or may be just a
> suggested route."
>
> "specially designated" I'd interpret stronger than "recommendation".

Maybe, but not much: e.g. "may be just a suggested route". The fact
that 'official' was introduced implies that designated is less than
'official', which I am not so sure reflects its usage.