My inclination would be to want an extra class of routes or two supported with
different network type (perhaps "unlcn" for "unnumbered local network"?) for
the lowliest of bike routes. I'm not what I'd want done for expressways.
Perhaps there could be a way to tag a road as treacherous for bicyclists,
that's still legal to ride on - or add a warning POI. I'm not sure if that
sort of information belongs in OSM, as it's subjective, but it would be helpful.
-Alan
________________________________
From: Scott Atwood <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: talk-us@openstreetmap.org
Sent: Tuesday, November 25, 2008 6:21:20 PM
Subject: Re: [Talk-us] Tagging and Rendering Cycle Ways
One other thing I'd like to add:
Expressways. Here in Santa Clara County, we have a quirky system of roads
called "Expressways", which lie somewhere between normal arterials and
freeways. They tend to have few or no frontage driveways and a limited
intersections. There are some freeway style interchanges. Pedestrians are
prohibited for the most part, but bicycles are permitted on all of them. Most
of them have wide shoulders, and a few even have bike lanes on the shoulders.
Some of these expressways are excellent routes for moderately confident
cyclists. I have no idea how these expressways should be tagged for cyclists,
and any suggestions are welcome.
-Scott
On Tue, Nov 25, 2008 at 5:27 PM, Scott Atwood <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
I am an avid cyclist in the San Francisco Bay Area and I have recently started
editing my local area in OSM. I would like to map all the local bike routes
and facilities, but I'm not sure of the best way to tag them in OSM. Here are
the different kinds of facilities I have encountered, and my best guess at how
to tag them.
Bike Lanes (a.k.a. Class II). This one is pretty easy. I just tag these as
{cycleway=lane}, and they render quite nicely in the Cycle Map layer. The one
problem I've encountered so far is that the existing tagging scheme doesn't
seem to handle bike lanes that are only one side of a two-way street. This is
not a common situation, but it does happen. A similar problem would apply to
sidewalks and on-street parking that are only on wide side of the street. Has
anyone proposed a solution to this class of problem?
Multi-Use Paths (a.k.a. Class I). This one is also pretty easy. I tag these
as {highway=cycleway, cycleway=track, foot=yes}. However, one wrinkle is that
these MUPs sometimes have have sections with an on-street alignment. In that
case, I added a relation to the entire MUP, both the off-street trail portions,
and the on-street alignments, that was tagged like {route=bicycle, type=route,
name=_name_of_the_MUP_}. I intentionally left off the network tag from the
relation, since this isn't part of a formal route network per se, but if
anything, it would be {network=lcn}
Bike Routes (a.k.a. Class III). This one, I'm a little bit more confused
about. These are just streets that have "Bicycle Route" signs on them, and
nothing more. Often, they overlap with Bike Lanes. They have no names or
numbers associated with them. I've never seen any formal map that shows bike
lanes. I've only ever stumbled across them while out on rides. They tend to
have approximately the quality of cycling conditions as Bike Lanes, without the
stripe, of course. But they are distinctly at the lowest tier of cycle
facility. I have typically been tagging these as {bicycle=designated}. One of
the other local cycle mappers has been tagging them with a relation like
{route=bicycle, type=route, network=lcn}. I'm not sure which is a better
approach. My tagging scheme feels more in line with the spirit of this type of
facility, but I suspect that to date no one is giving this a distinct
rendering. The latter scheme seems OK too, but perhaps
implies a bit more status to these routes that feels appropriate. Also, I
suspect they may render even more prominently than Bike Lanes, which doesn't
seem quite right.
Local Numbered Cycle Routes. In my local area, there is only a single
numbered local bike route, San Jose Crosstown Bike Route 11, which I
implemented as a relation like {network=lcn, ref=11, route=bicycle,
type=route}. This tagging feels about right, and renders the way I'd expect in
the Cycle Map.
Bicycle Boulevards. To the best of my knowledge, there is only one Bicycle
Boulevard in the local area, the Ellen Fletcher Bicycle Boulevard, on Bryant
St. in Palo Alto. As far as I know, no one has added the Bicycle Boulevard to
OSM yet, and I'm not sure what the best way is. Probably a relation is the
best tool to use, but I feel like a Bicycle Boulevard ought to have a distinct
rendering, since it is distinguished by lots of cyclist friendly features like
diverters for motorists, traffic calming measures, and cyclist signal priority.
I guess what I would really like is a richer set options to use tagging and
rendering bike routes, besides just lcn/rcn/ncn. To some extent, Class III
Bike Routes, bicycle boulevards, and the on-street alignments of MUPs are all
appropriate use cases for bicycle route relations, but to me at least, feel
like they should be tagged and rendered distinctly from routes that are part of
an official local cycling network.
Thoughts? Opinions?
-Scott
--
Scott Atwood
Cycle tracks will abound in Utopia. ~H.G. Wells
--
Scott Atwood
Cycle tracks will abound in Utopia. ~H.G. Wells_______________________________________________
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