Steve, I understand the concept you are putting forth and my concern is to be sure that whatever mechanism is used for mapping US Bicycle Routes that there is communication and coordination in the process.
And this is a bit off topic (forgive me as I am new here) but why is there no scale displayed on OSM/OCM maps? Likewise why do large city names not show up until you zoom in? At roughly above "half way" on the detail scale the names Chicago, Detroit, Indianapolis, Cincinnati, New York City, Pittsburgh, Cleveland, Los Angeles, Denver, London, Paris, Berlin, Amsterdam, Rome and on and on don't show up. It seems just the opposite of Google Maps where you don't see the suburbs' names until you zoom in - in OSM/OCM you only see (some) suburbs' names until you zoom in. Kerry Irons Adventure Cycling Association -----Original Message----- From: stevea [mailto:[email protected]] Sent: Sunday, March 10, 2013 4:42 PM To: [email protected] Subject: Re: [Talk-us] US Bicycle Routes in KY, TN, AL, MS, and GA I just want to chime in that "we" (the People of our county: partly by Citizen participation, partly by presentations to our county Regional Transportation Commission) find the visualizations that OSM affords us an excellent way to posit proposed bicycle routing/numbering using the "state=proposed" tag. These (local cycleway networks and numbering) display as dashed lines, and everybody already understands what dashed lines mean: routes are proposed, and one should not expect to find numbered signs on the ground -- yet. If/as these proposed routes are (slowly, to allow public debate and signage to be funded) accepted by the various city/county jurisdictions involved, OSM contributors simply remove the "state=proposed" tag, and the route's visual semiotics in OSM go from dashed line to solid line. This seems (is?) an excellent way to both "posit, visualize and discuss routes and numbering before they exist" and to "assert routes are real after political process." OSM acts as a sort of ready-made solution to the problem of discussing something both geographic and public debate-oriented, and after all is said and done, OSM ends up a win-win all around. Santa Cruz County in California has a wholly public-contributed bicycle numbering protocol as a proposal before it right now (colloquially known as "CycleNet"), and OSM's Cycle Map layer is the best way that exists to visualize it. This works on wider than just a local level, as a Caltrans (California DOT) regional guy I'm in contact with said he is "watching" this proposal unfold so that something similar may be deployable on a statewide level. (Should California ever get its act together regarding statewide bicycle routing, something I've gotten dead-end answers about from Sacramento: Penny Gray, are you reading?). So, OSM as a bicycle route/numbering visualization method is real, it is happening (at a local and regional level), and it seems to be accepted as a powerful tool for discussion of the actual routes and numbering under proposal. This certainly can be similarly true on a national level. All that is needed is some wider/continuing sensible discussion of how we intend to and actually use the map and its ingredients. Cheers, SteveA Santa Cruz, California _______________________________________________ Talk-us mailing list [email protected] http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-us _______________________________________________ Talk-us mailing list [email protected] http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-us
