Austin, Texas
V・T・E Austin, Texas |
latitude: 30.315, longitude: -97.834 |
Browse map of Austin 30°18′54.00″ N, 97°50′02.40″ W |
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Austin is a city in Texas at latitude 30°18′54.00″ North, longitude 97°50′02.40″ West.
Bicycle Route Relations
Introduction
Austin has experienced explosive growth since the original bike network was conceived in the late 1990s. Destinations, housing, and infrastructure have all fundamentally and significantly changed how people get around. The original network consisted of numbered (numerical) routes that did not correspond to numbered streets but were instead arbitrary numbers. Many of these routes today have little to no existing wayfinding on the ground. The changesets for these routes contain no sources, and most of the users who created them 10-15 years ago are no longer active. A few routes have green Bike Route <- -> signs; even fewer have wayfinding signs with You-are-here mini-maps. Besides these, there are no current sources - physical or digital - that show the original bike route network. Furthermore, many of the original bike routes that remain in OSM are broken, with many gaps and redundancies, which of course cannot be verified without either a current map or consistent physical signs. For these reasons, Austin's bike routes need to be manually and individually audited, and their OSM relations updated or removed.
It would also be helpful to fully audit other bike route relations (i.e. Walnut Creek Trail and others) in Austin City and Travis County, with an eye for local vs. regional designations, consistency, gaps, and other issues.
Since the city's 2014 master bike plan and 2020 map updates, Austin has chosen to follow other bikeable American cities by remapping city roads on a stress/comfort-based system for the average bicyclist. However, since this is inherently and highly subjective, it cannot be translated into OSM.
Notably, the city of Austin does not appear to have a map of bike infrastructure, so Austin's OSM bike data must necessarily rely on users' local knowledge - and accuracy - since it can't be verified.
If the city does implement a comprehensive and cohesive system of bike routes in the future - one that is not based on perceived rider stress but on objective criteria - then this system should be created as one singular local ("lcn") bike route relation called "US:TX:Austin," following the common standard of many other bikeable American cities.
Resources
- Bicycle | AustinTexas.gov - Austin DOT/DPW's official page of bicycle resources: master plans, maps, projects, etc.
- Bicycle Austin - a website associated with the original Austin bike/ped committee but unaffiliated with the City itself. Heavily used in the 1990s-2000s but outdated now. Still an impressive and helpful singular resource. Some links may require archive.org's Wayback Machine to read.
- Austin Bicycle Plan Part 1 (1996) via archive.org - the first half of the original (numerical), outdated bike route plan. The Bicycle Route Map in Appendix C was never scanned, so it's missing. Because of course.
- Austin Bicycle Plan Part 2 (1998) - via archive.org. Chapter 4.6 lists the numerical bike routes, sort of, but by street, and alphabetically. In the alphabetized table of street names, the number in the first column ("Route - Seg.") does correspond to the few existing numerical routes that remain. For example, 12th St is designed as Bike Route #48.
- 2014 Austin Bicycle Plan - html page of chapter PDFs
- 2014 Austin Bicycle Plan PDF, 266 pages, 33.8MB
- OSM Slack channel local-texas
Maps
- Austin Bike Routes - the City's official, current (2020) interactive bike map, with roadways ranked by comfort/stress level
- Bicycle Austin: Bike Maps & Routes
- https://www.austintexas.gov/page/trail-directory
- Violet Crown Trail Maps
- Austin in OpenCycleMap.org
- Austin in CyclOSM.org
- Bicycle Tags Map - a slippy map showing "bicycle-related tags which might not otherwise show up on the standard map rendering styles." https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Bicycle_tags_map
- OSM Inspector - a slippy map used for checking for defects and errors in relations and multipolygons
Major Trails and Named Routes
These trails' relations should also audited and revised, or have new relations created for them. We should also come to a consensus on using “Greenbelt” vs “Trail” (or both) in titles and reference initials. It would be very helpful for this section to organized in a table that includes the relation IDs, descriptions, statuses, notes, etc. RE: ref tags (initials), keep in mind that OpenCycleMap.org will only render three initials, but CyclOSM can render 4+. And speaking of which, there should probably be a conversation about whether to prioritize "G" for greenbelt/greenway or "T" for trail for routes that have both in their name. https://www.austintexas.gov/page/trail-directory
route name | ref | relation ID # | network type | status | notes | maps/resources |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Lance Armstrong Bikeway | LAB | 67561 67561 | local | |||
Austin to Manor Trail | AMT? | 6848582 6848582 | regional | Needs construction tags: the trail route is currently rendering from Walnut Creek trailhead at Lindell Lane to Ben E. Fisher Park in Manor, but the trail has not been built yet. | ||
Northern Walnut Creek Trail | NWCT? | regional? | ||||
Southern Walnut Creek Trail | SWCT? | 3457710 3457710 | regional? | |||
MoKan Trail | MT or MKT? | local? | ||||
Shoal Creek Greenbelt Trail | SCGT | 14677018 14677018 | regional? | should all Shoal Creek Trails be separate relations or combined? | ||
Shoal Creek Urban Trail | SCUT | should all Shoal Creek Trails be separate relations or combined? | ||||
Shoal Creek Park Trail | SCPT | should all Shoal Creek Trails be separate relations or combined? | ||||
Lady Bird Hike & Bike Trail | LBT? | local | ||||
Ann & Roy Butler Hike & Bike Trail | ARBHB | local | Should ref initials be shortened to ARBT? Given the name, once a consensus is reached, there should be a Bicycle Route relation, and either a Hiking Route relation or a Walking Route relation. | |||
Boggy Creek Greenbelt Trail | BCG? BCT? BCGT? | local | ||||
Red Line Trail | RLT? | local | ||||
Red Line Parkway | RLP? | local | ||||
Violet Crown Trail | VCT | 16137374 16137374 | regional? | Given the terrain and quality of the trails themselves, I (BPTT) would argue this existing relation should be changed to a Mountain Bike Route relation instead of a basic Bicycle Route. | https://violetcrowntrail.com/explore/ | |
Barton Creek Greenbelt Trail | BCT? BCGT? | 17289355 17289355 | ? | |||
Latta Branch Greenbelt | LBG? | Is the Western Oaks Trail part of Latta or separate? | ||||
Mueller Greenway | MG? | local? | Several exist - separate or combine? | |||
Bastrop State Park | BSP | 89928 89928 | Is this a de facto route or an official route? Appears to be the former. This page recommends Park Road 1C: https://tpwd.texas.gov/state-parks/bastrop | |||
Gaines Greenbelt | GG? | |||||
Circle C Metro Park | ||||||
Union Park Loop | UPL | local | Since they are so short, these three should be combined into one. | |||
Union Park East Loop | UPEL | local | Since they are so short, these three should be combined into one. | |||
Union Park West Loop | UPWL | local | Since they are so short, these three should be combined into one. | |||
Numerical Bike Routes
route # | relation ID | roadways/general area | physical signs (route or wayfindning) | status | notes | ||||||
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
1 | 71208 71208 | City Park Road in Emma Long Metro Park | only Share the Road signs | removed 2/26/24 | No route number signs or wayfinding, only Share the Road signs (no painted sharrows, however). Relation was removed and roadways tagged with cycleway:both=shared lanes. | ||||||
2 | 77099 77099 | Reagan Blvd, Parmer Lane | no | removed 2/27/24 | No signage, 6-lane highway with shoulders and 60mph speed limit; can't be corroborated, so should probably be removed. Bike Lanes on Reagan and Parmer were added when relation was removed, but someone could add cycleway=shoulder tags if they really wanted to. | ||||||
4 | 77096 77096 | Duval Road | yes | updated 2/27/24 | |||||||
5 | 71210 71210 | Beckett Road, McCarty Lane | no | removed 2/29/24 | removed route, added bike lanes to Beckett | ||||||
6 | 77097 77097 | Santa Cruz, Duval, MoPac sidepath | yes | 80% updated 2/27/24 | Added this map note at MoPac/Burnet/Gracy Farms Lane: "As of 2023, Gracy Farms Lane has a two-way bike lane beginning at Burnet and continuing southbound. (Northbound GFL maintains its one-way bike lane.) How far does this new two-way bike lane go? To Hobby Horse, Stonehollow, Metric Blvd, or further? It will need to be added to Bike Route #6, and probably remapped separately. There is no current consensus on two-way bike lanes that are on the roadway but unprotected. If it were protected or separated from the roadway, it would need to be mapped as a separate feature." Perhaps =contraflow AND oneway:bicycles=no is the best combination of tags. | ||||||
7 | 71211 71211 | Spicewood Springs Rd | no | removed 2/29/24 | removed route, added bike lanes | ||||||
8 | 1713278 1713278 | Yager Lane | relation should probably be moved from Yager Lane to the adjacent sidepath | ||||||||
9 | 71213 71213 | ||||||||||
10 | 77276 77276 | Floral Park Drive, Braker Lane | |||||||||
11 | 78321 78321 | ||||||||||
12 | 1713279 1713279 | ||||||||||
13 | 77828 77828 | ||||||||||
14 | 2340914 2340914 | Rundberg Lane | currently westbound only | ||||||||
15 | 78687 78687 | ||||||||||
16 | 77274 77274 | ||||||||||
17 | 73191 73191 | ||||||||||
18 | 77278 77278 | ||||||||||
20 | 1715077 1715077 | Great Northern Blvd | has a two-way bike lane that is part of the roadway and not separated, so existing tags at least need to be upgraded, but this falls in a grey zone between lane vs. track... "=contraflow" or "=opposite" might be best here if they can accommodate two-way traffic | ||||||||
21 | 73315 73315 | ||||||||||
22 | 73307 73307 | Jester Blvd, Beauford, Lakewood, Driftwood, Sprucewood, Lemonwood, Backtrail, Far West Blvd, overpass path, Shoal Creek Blvd, Greenlawn Pkwy, Daugherty, Pegram & Justin cycletrack, Grover, Brentwood | yes but | updated 2/29/24 | Only signed from MoPac overpass (Far West Blvd) eastward to Shoal Creek Blvd where it crosses BR 31. Overlaps with BR 31 on Shoal Creek Blvd. | ||||||
23 | 71425 71425 | ||||||||||
24 | 1715078 1715078 | Denson Lane | relation should probably be moved from Denson Drive roadway to the cycletrack | ||||||||
25 | 71423 71423 | Melridge Place | move from roadway to Melridge Place sidepath? | ||||||||
27 | 73269 73269 | Menchaca Road | |||||||||
28 | 1713464 1713464 | Hancock, North Loop Blvd, 53rd St | |||||||||
29 | 73270 73270 | Lynn, Niles, Hartford, Bull | |||||||||
30 | 1713463 1713463 | 51st St | |||||||||
31 | 2340911 2340911 | Rio Grande, Neuces, Shoal Creek Blvd, W 31st | yes but | updated 2/29/24 | Is incorrectly mapped on Rio Grande from 4th & Shoal Creek to MLK. Needs to be moved to Neuces, from 7th to 17/18th? Unclear where it goes north of MLK. Has green Bike Route signs at SW corner of Neuces & 7th, SW & NE corners of Neuces & 12th, and mini-map signs at 1107 Neuces and 1204 Neuces. Overlaps with BR 22 on Shoal Creek Blvd. There are very few green BR signs on/near Shoal Creek Blvd between Allandale and the intersection of W 30th & West Ave. There is one green BR 31 <--> sign on the east side of Hancock at SC Blvd, but nothing south of there. It's unclear how/where Bike Route 31 connects from W 30th & West Ave to the next sign at Shoal Creek Blvd & Hancock, or where it goes from 7th & Nueces, but the rest of the route is accurate now. | ||||||
35 | none yet | Amherst Drive near Duval Road | yes | ||||||||
36 | 71427 71427 | 35th, 38th, 38th 1/2, | |||||||||
38 | 1713321 1713321 | W 34th, E 34th | |||||||||
39 | 2340915 2340915 | ||||||||||
40 | 1713322 1713322 | W 29th | |||||||||
41 | 77804 77804 | ||||||||||
42 | 71426 71426 | Scenic, Windsor, 24th, Guadalupe, Dean Keaton, Manor, | |||||||||
44 | 1713296 1713296 | ||||||||||
45 | 77477 77477 | ||||||||||
46 | 1713297 1713297 | E 21st | gap in UT campus | ||||||||
47 | 73310 73310 | Colorado, Capitol Grounds, Guadalupe | |||||||||
48 | 71479 71479 | 12th | yes but | Missing two relations on Capitol Grounds to connect to Route 47. Has two green Bike Route signs at SW & NE corners of 12th & Neuces. | |||||||
49 | 1739948 1739948 | Trinity & San Jacinto | |||||||||
51 | 1825775 1825775 | Red River | |||||||||
52 | 71424 71424 | 5th & 6th | |||||||||
57 | 1739965 1739965 | Wedgewood, Hansford, Furness, Rutherford, Cameron, Coronado Hills, | |||||||||
60 | 74125 74125 | Riverside Drive | |||||||||
64 | 78815 78815 | Barton Springs Road | |||||||||
66 | 77474 77474 | Southwest Parkway | |||||||||
80 | 77475 77475 | William Cannon Drive | needs bike lanes added | ||||||||
82 | 77478 77478 | Cooper Lane, Convict Hill Rd | |||||||||
84 | none yet | possibly along Davis Lane around Violet Crown trailhead | |||||||||
86 | 77476 77476 | Slaughter Lane | Want to get 86'd? Ride your bike on Slaughter Lane! :/ | ||||||||
115 | none yet | Latta Drive at Violet Crown trailhead | yes | ||||||||
339 | 78688 78688 | ||||||||||
434 | 1713280 1713280 | Arboretum Blvd | |||||||||
934 | none but see notes | Barton Creek MoPac Bridge loop | not a route relation, but for some reason was tagged
which highlights the way but does not provide a relation for managing tags, nor does it waymark the route on maps that render waymarked trails |
Events
Upcoming Events
Past Events
- Fancy organising an Austin mapping party? Just do it! Link the details here
- February 8th, 2016 - Happy Hour - 6pm at Black Star Co-op
- February 10th, 2016 - MaptimeATX / ATX OSG Mapping Party - 6pm at ObjectRocket offices 401 Congress, Suite 1950 (19th floor)
- October 31, 2010 - Austin Halloween mapping party 2010, 10am at Halcyon Coffeehouse (tentative time & location)
- February 28th, 2009 - Austin mapping party : Yahoo! Upcoming, Facebook, MeetUP
- Jan 25th 2009 - at Austin Java [1]. See blog post and mapping animation on youtube. Also listed on upcoming
See Also
- Proposed building import
- BBBike @ Austin - a cycle route planner for Austin