[OSM-talk] Cyclelane on left/right

[Morten Kjeldgaard]

Jonas Häggqvist wrote:
> Norbert Hoffmann wrote:
>> Martin Koppenhoefer wrote:
>>
>>> 2009/8/14 Konrad Skeri <konrad at skeri.com>:
>>>> Are there any progress on the left/right situation on cycleway=lane/track that
>>>> are only on one side of the street?
>>> yes, there is a solution for cycleway=track. Map it separately and tag
>>> highway=cycleway. track can be considered "deprecated" ;-)
>> But don't forget to connect the cycleway to the road wherever it is
>> possible to change from one to the other.
> 
> Which it is at literally every single point in space along most Danish
> cycleways. This seems like a poor plan.

It is indeed a very poor plan. Almost all major streets in danish cities
have biketracks in each side of the street. In profile, the construction
looks like this:

    sidewalk
  -------------
               \    bikepath
                 ---------------------
                                      |    heavy traffic.
                                       -----------------------------------

When mapping a crossing of two such streets, you need to make the following
construction:

                     .    |    .
                     .    |    .
                     .    |    .
.....................o....|....o....................
                     .    |    .
--------------------------o-------------------------
                     .    |    .
.....................o....|....o....................
                     .    |    .
                     .    |    .
                     .    |    .

That's five nodes for a single intersection! You can imagine how many bugs
there are in the maps where mappers have not had the patience to do so!
Mostly, mappers have just "forgotten" the connecting nodes, which doesn't
matter much for map-drawing, but screws routing up badly. It means that the
map in danish cities has gazillions of "intersecting ways" validation errors.

Another thing is that you need to place the parallel cycleway about 20
meters from the highway to have it rendered on the map. And mappers have a
hard time constructing a parallel cycleway, they often zigzag along the main
road and it looks terrible.

I know Jonas has some examples on how nice it looks when you use the
cycleway=track on an osmarendered map (mapnik doesn't use the tag). Perhaps
you can post those as an illustration, Jonas?

PS: In fact there's a similar problem with sidewalks. There ought to be a
"city_street" highway type with sidewalks.

Cheers,
Morten