Talk:Key:cycleway

From OpenStreetMap Wiki
Jump to: navigation, search

Contents

Left, Right, Forward, Backward?

Correct me if I am wrong but the choice of left/right depends on the direction in which the way is drawn (after all ways can be considered as arrows). On the Access page they suggest the use of "forward" and "backward" for the same purpose. Neither are that easy for mappers to use as it requires the people to realise how ways are essentially arrows, and then the mapper has to determine which way the arrow is pointing (something that I currently struggled to do in Potlatch2 - I hadn't realised that the arrow next to the bin indicates the direction)!

My concern with right / left is that some may think "ok we drive on the right side of the road so it must be cycleway:right" (similarly left for countries such as the UK that drive on the left side of the road). A quick look on TagInfo reveals:

A way has a 50/50% chance of being drawn in either direction so (unless people are reversing ways as they prefer right to left) then you would expect the split to be closer. --RobJN 15:54, 17 May 2012 (BST)


Cycleways on the left and right

So if there's a cycleway=* on both sides of the road, should it be tagged as e.g. cycleway=track;opposite_track? I'm assuming so for now. A related question: I'm assuming that cycleway=opposite_* isn't dependent on the status of oneway=*. Am I right here? --achadwick 23:03, 11 May 2008 (UTC)

I am not, by the looks of Hawkes's recent edit. Apparently opposite_* is dependent on oneway=yes, and thus should be used for what's called a "contraflow cycle lane" in the UK (but only the ones on oneway streets). This is a mess. Additionally, cycle lanes and the bicycle parts of shared-use pavements/sidewalks here almost always have directionality, and more often than not can only be found on one side of the road, going in the same direction as the carriageway they're next to for safety reasons. The current scheme does not reflect the fact that the cycleway often only applies in one direction. --achadwick 12:57, 4 June 2008 (UTC)
I'm definitely not the final authority on the cycleway tag, so tag as you will. :-) Previous use has suggested that the opposite_ values are for contraflow lanes (and tracks?), and that which side of the road the track or lane is on is left undefined for now. So keep in mind that any method for documenting that will be new. It should probably consider: a bike lane or track, going with or against traffic, on one side or both sides. --Hawke 17:01, 4 June 2008 (UTC)
Indeed, frequently in the UK, the cycle lane stops and starts repeatedly along a major road. The cycleway=lane convention surely couldn't support this, as it is a feature of an entire road/street. I notice that in London, cycle tracks parallel to the road are often used to indicate cycle lanes which stop and start. I suppose that is the only way for now, but breaks the convention that a cycle track is off-road. --davespod 13:31, 14 October 2008 (UTC)

Combining with :left and :right

It's not a perfect solution, but Proposed features/right left is mostly compatible with the existing scheme. Here's what we might do to fix this mess:

Hypothetical finer-grained model for cycleway.
Value
lane track opposite_lane opposite_track
Key cycleway:left On-road bike lane down the left-hand side* for with-flow cycle traffic (only?). Off-road cycle track down the left-hand side* of the road. Typically segregated from motor traffic, but typically not from pedestrians. For with-flow cycle traffic (only?). On-road, on the left*, against-flow (only?) Off-road, on the left*, against-flow (only?)
cycleway:right As above, but on the right-hand side of the road*
cycleway As above, but applies to both sides of the road at once (incl. oneway?)

* reckoned with reference to the Way's direction arrow.

I'd also like to remove the requirement that opposite_* only be applied to one-way streets, state that plain lane and track allow only with-flow traffic, and create a 5th and 6th category of bidirectional_{lane,track} to cover cases where the lane or track can be traversed in both directions. Rendering engines have all the details they need to render cycleways nicely right there on the way itself: highly advantageous for lanes. Routing engines have all they need to know about for making bike routes too. Double win! (admittedly at the cost of some extra complexity). I think that's mostly it for physical characteristics, with the possible exception of width (cycleway:width[:left|:right]=<metres>, perhaps?) --achadwick 02:29, 22 February 2009 (UTC)

Osmarender bug?

I am mapping some divided suburban arterials with bake lanes, coded as pairs of one-way secondary and tertiary highways with cycleway=lane. Osmarender renders light green stripes not only on the outsides of the roads where the bike lanes exist, but also on the insides, next to the median strip between the roadways, where we actually have the fast lane for cars but no bike lane. Is there a particular combination of tags that would cuase the bike lanes to get rendered correctly? Or should I just ignore the bug as it applies to rendering only?

Rendering :left or :right

Neither cycleway:left=track nor cycleway:right=track appear to render in any layer. Are they supposed to? Or is it just easier to add the cycleway as a separate way along side the way for the highway?

indicating when you are obliged to use the cycleway

In Germany, the presence of a road sign indicates that you have to ride on the cycleway (interesting in the case cycleway=track. Any suggestions on how to tag this? cycleway:compulsory=yes/no? Robx 17:26, 26 July 2008 (UTC)

In Austria, every cycleway (no matter if track or lane) has to be used in any case. I'd suggest to leave it like with highway=living_street and state that the tag is implicit according to the rules of the country. E.g., in Austria, one would have to tag all highway=crossing that have crossing=uncontrolled (for bikes) with maxspeed=10 for the bicycles. -- MapFlea 14:40, 11 November 2008 (UTC)
I think that doesn't work in Germany. If I understand the situation correctly then it's only compulsory if accompanied with a specific sign, which is by no means used on every cycle lane. Randomjunk 15:38, 11 November 2008 (UTC)
in that case highway=cycleway would always be compulsive because it's designated for bicycles (predominantly indicated by signs). If there is no special indicated/designated way it's just a "path + bicycle=yes" or you have to use ne normal carlanes of a road, because e.g. in Germany you are not allowed to use "path + foot=designated -> highway=footway" (e.g. sidewalks) if it's not additionally allowed. --Cbm 06:28, 12 November 2008 (UTC)
So, then as a conclusion (summary): In Germany, highway=cycleway shall be used for dedicated bicycle tracks where usage is compulsive, cycleway=track on itself stands for both (compulsive or not). In Austria, cycleway=track is enough as all cycleway=* combinations are compulsive on their own. Is this summary correct? -- MapFlea 07:12, 12 November 2008 (UTC)
highway=cycleway = cycleway=track. cycleway=track just means that a "designated cycleway" follows the road. It would be se same as tagging a seperate way right next to the normal road-way. Only cyclway=cyclelane could both depends on how you tag "Schutzstreifen" which are no designted bicycle-lanes and have no compulsive use. Designated bicyclelanes have afaik compulsive use just like autark cycleways; they are just intgrated in the normal road-surface. (Also see: http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/index.php/DE:Germany_roads_tagging#Fu.C3.9F-_und_Radweg) --Cbm 07:38, 12 November 2008 (UTC)

Basics

Being a newbie I'm lost in the basics I guess. Are cycleway=lane and cycleway=track an additional tag for the roadway itself or should it tag a separate path adjacent to the roadway? --Miriat 12:34, 18 November 2008 (UTC)

adding cycleway=lane or cycleway=track to the road is more than sufficient. If you have time to kill you can draw separate highway=cycleway next to the road (plus all connections to the road from the cycleway), but IMHO OSM isn't built to handle that well and GPS tracks usually aren't good enough to be able to draw those tracks correctly. --Eimai 13:03, 18 November 2008 (UTC)
Their separation can be assessed from mapping photos, i.e. "here the cycleway (centerline) on the left is one estate car's length from the road centerline, but there it avoids a tree by going one car length more to the side". The result is as accurate as the road itself - with several traces they both can be some meters offset but their relative distance to each other is even more accurate than that. But often it's really sufficient to just add the tag to the road, especially on the first pass of mapping. Alv 13:17, 18 November 2008 (UTC)
Do you know any roads that are tagged that way which I could look at as an example? Are they handled well by the renderer (i.e. the cycleways are visible at least in cyclemap)? --Miriat 09:51, 21 November 2008 (UTC)

Here in Denmark we have many roads where the road and cycle path are seperated by a curb, just like a sidewalk. I can't quite figure out whether these paths translate to cycleway=track or cycleway=lane. For a while I've considered cycleway=lane to be when the road and cycle path are only seperated by paint on the ground, while cycleway=track was when a curb or similar barrier seperated them - but now I'm not sure anymore. How do other people tag these? --Jesper Cheetah 03:35, 4 April 2009 (UTC)

I switch from lane to track merely by the existance of a curb, hedge or other material of more than 30cm width between the road and the cycleway. The rule of 30cm can be stretched of course... The lane is a directly embedded 'cycle'-way on another road, by means of painting a set of extra lines on the street, tracks have more distance to the road it belong to. --ivom 18:42, 26 April 2010 (UTC)

Rendering wish list

In Oxford, we'd like/need to be able to show cycle lanes on one side of the road only, preferably using something like cycleway:left=lane or cycleway:right=lane.--RichardMann 08:34, 8 February 2009 (UTC)

We'd also like to be able to show the pinchpoints, perhaps using cycleway=squeezed for roads with a fair amount of traffic (ie highway=primary) and kerbside traffic lanes of under about 4 metres. To be rendered as a red cycle lane.--RichardMann 23:23, 9 February 2009 (UTC)

Cycleways / lanes / tracks

Moved from Talk:Map_Features

I'm curious about the correct use of values for the key Cycleway. As I understand it, a lane is a dedicated strip on the main road surface to be used mainly/only for riding bicycles on. A track would be road surface separate from the main road running alongside it. Then there are corresponding values for lanes and tracks in the opposite directions. Are the definitions I use correct? What if a residential road has cycle lanes in both directions (given that no key has more than one value)? Or cycle tracks 10 meters from the main road? --Benbono 22:35, 4 April 2007 (BST)

"road has cycle lanes in both directions": if it is on the border on the road, you have the value "lane". It is the same like the car on a highway, one highway for two directions.
"cycle tracks 10 meters from the main road": it must be a separate track. You should use key "highway" with value "cycleway". OnTour 21:37, 29 May 2007 (BST)

Cycleway=no

I think that a value of 'no' should be added to the list of values. Omitting a cycleway tag is ambiguous as to whether there is no cycleway or if it was simply left off. --DanHomerick 17:23, 24 September 2009 (UTC)

I agree. We have some dual-carriageway intersections here in Tampa there is a bicycle lane approaching the intersection from, say, the south, but none for the first block or two as you depart the intersection to the north, with the lane then reappearing. Tagging these blocks with "cycleway=no" is especially helpful because one would expect to find a bike lane but none exists. At least you let the cyclist know that something needs to be watched for.--EdH 16:58, 5 January 2011 (UTC)

Cyclestreet

I have started to use cycleway=cyclestreet in combination with highway=residential or highway=unclassified to mark what is called a "fietsstraat" in Dutch. There is a proposal for highway=cycleroad, but that generated a bunch of opposition. Besides a Dutch "fietsstraat" is sufficiently different from a German "Fahrradstrasse" that I think that proposal doesn't fit. --Cartinus 12:51, 13 December 2009 (UTC)

Cycleways on pavements

What should I do about shared pedestrian and cycle pavements following the road? That's obviously not cycleway=lane, but cycleway=track seems to imply a road surface and not the elevated pedestrian surface. I often seen signs indicating that pavements are permitted for use by cyclists in the UK either with a blue background, white bicycle rectangular sign - or a circular blue background, white symbol sign showing pedestrian and cyclist. Then sometimes the pavement is divided with a solid white line to segregate cyclists and pedestrians. That seems to suggest that cycleway=pavement should exist. --Pink Duck 13:17, 21st January 2010 (UTC)

No, cycleway=track tells only that the cycleway is separated from the vehicular section by anything from a curb stone to several meters of scrub. Personally, I think it's better to draw all (signposted or not) cycleways as separate ways with highway=cycleway. The white line you mention, separating pedestrians and cyclists, yields a segregated=yes. Alv 08:58, 22nd January 2010 (UTC)
Then the cycle track description "Road (UK) or path (USA, Canada) dedicated to cyclists on separate right of way" at Bicycle#Cycle_tracks conflicts. In the UK there are segregated road-level tracks for cyclists as well as paths designated for use by cyclists. The distinction would inform cyclists about whether they can expect to encounter pedestrian traffic. --Pink Duck 17:34, 22nd January 2010 (UTC)

Going from opposite to bicycle:oneway=no

I propose a change in the tagging scheme for streets that are oneway for vehicles but not for bicycles. The use of opposite is documented in the wiki as the way to go, but in the cases I know of there is no markings on the street showing where cyclist should be. Thus there is no cycleway in or on the street. Instead two sub-signs are placed on either end of the street depicting cyclists are allowed to go both ways. For this kind of streets the tag to be used should tell something about a restriction a positive one for cyclist in this case. Tag these kind of streets like this oneway=yes, bicycle:oneway=no The tags opposite_lane and opposite_track are useful, when there are markings to segregate the main road with the cycleway.--ivom 20:56, 2 February 2010 (UTC)

Wouldn't it make more sense to use oneway:bicycle=no for that? See also talk page for oneway=*--Kurt Roeckx 14:10, 18 April 2010 (UTC)
I took the approach to look at the sub-signage in these streets as a negative restriction that applies to bicycles alone, therefor the name-space starts with bicycle (not cycleway). --ivom 18:44, 26 April 2010 (UTC)
It's not really necessary to change something that is used 15.000x worldwide so you can assume that this tag is well accepted from mappers ... --Mueck 00:31, 6 August 2010 (BST)

Hazards?

How would I tag a hazard, such as a bike lane in the door zone? --NE2 04:31, 25 April 2010 (UTC)

No one has started the task of collecting and classifying different hazards, so the best option so far is the free form hazard=*, proposed twice: Proposed_features/Hazard_warning and Proposed_features/hazard. Alv 10:54, 25 April 2010 (UTC)

NEV / golf cart lanes?

How would I tag the fact that a public street has a lane dedicated for golf carts (this one is right next to another lane dedicated to bicycles)?

Street-legal golf carts are apparently also called NEVs (probably for Neighborhood Electric Vehicle), at least in California. Sun City Roseville has separate golf cart lanes and bike lanes. Sun City Lincoln has combined NEV and bike lines. I understand the accessibility depends on the speed limit, and in some cases cities have to apply a certification or exception or something from the DMV. Is there any difference besides the names?

Integrating (Cycle/Foot)ways

I'd like to discuss a principle matter on this page. Within OSM we can tag everything on every methode we like. We're free as hell. ;) Nevertheless IMHO every part of the road that has the same name should be mapped/tagged a simple as possible. Therefor a road can consists out of a vehical/cycle/pedestrial part. One way (line) should be sufficiant to tell OSM where those parts are laying. The main tags should be: highway=*

Additional to this (if highway <> cycleway/footway) cycleway=* and/or footway=*

In this simple way you have tagged the existance of the different parts of one street that all carry the same name.

There still is the a problem that some features on the cycleway/footway part of the road conflicts with the same feature on the vehical part of the road. Already discussed example is the oneway=* feature. To solve this problem it is already mentioned as: cycleway:oneway=* (footway mostly do not respond on oneway features.) cycleway:surface=paving_stones footway:surface=grass

In this way the OSM community can - tag both cycleways and footways on a consisant way without extra mapping - Render more easy and more readable maps.

Please react on this view and please forget for a moment that is will be a lot of work to redo all the existing separate mapped cycleways.

-- There is a proposal coming which will combine your idea with the left/right proposal. For now see the Advanced Tagging scheme

This would cause problems when mapping a cycleway that ends at a sidewalk (example). If the sidewalk is mapped as part of the roadway, how do you indicate that there's no direct access to the roadway from the cycleway? --NE2 21:23, 15 December 2010 (UTC)
I can't not really see what is what on the picture, but we have solved some of those problems with tags on the node. For example bicycle:crossing=no. We are still not really sure if that is the best solution. But were does that cycleway leads to? It starts at a sidewalk?
Which leads to: when routers a building the routing graph and know about those tags, they end up constructing (hopefully) the same network that the mapper could have drawn themself, and which would (already) have been visually inspected to be correct. With current tools it's far from trivial to construct the crossing ways, say, at an intersection: it seems the tools would need to look at several nearby nodes for those tags before deciding which connections to add and which to suppress. Alv 07:55, 16 December 2010 (UTC)
Yes, the cycleway ends at a sidewalk (footway): http://www.openstreetmap.org/?lat=28.654172&lon=-81.340925&zoom=18&layers=M
I also question how you propose to include length information when the sidewalk curves back and forth and is thus significantly longer than the road. And what happens when there's something between the sidewalk and road, like a fountain? --NE2 22:36, 15 December 2010 (UTC)
Haha, how fun is that. No one can use that path. For a cycling router it is a dead end. I assume you can't (read: are not allowed to) ride on the sidewalk. But your point of a fountain is a valid one. The intention is to make it easier to map 'tracks' or 'lanes', but it is still very well possible to map a sidewalk or cycleway as a separate way. For example this situation: http://maps.google.nl/?ie=UTF8&ll=52.06699,5.111175&spn=0.007479,0.01929&t=h&z=16&layer=c&cbll=52.067018,5.111359&panoid=WJVQgpzPVqRL7wKIhpAqIw&cbp=13,71.89,,0,5.4. There a cycleway=track is very usefull, there will be only one bridge instead of three. Furtermore, there is, not yet, a need to map the in between parts. And with our proposal the bus lane can be described to.
Actually in Florida (and most U.S. states) you can ride on the sidewalk if you yield to pedestrians, unless the city prohibits it.
As for bus lanes, there's one next to a road in Orlando, with sidewalks between the road and the bus roadway in places (mainly to reach bus stops). --NE2 23:42, 15 December 2010 (UTC)
Three bridges on a/the rendered map is a rendering issue, and IMO a very bad reason to include extra turns into the cycleway. Looking at that location in osm one would have to misrepresentatively alter the shape of the cycleways to connect them to the "main" highway way (as it's at the centerline) with the cycleway:left etc. tags. Albeit a surprising setup, even to a law-abiding citizen that cycleway ending at the sidewalk is not a dead end, the distance to walk with your bike to the next crossing can be a fair trade for the increased safety/decreased stress/saved distance vs. a route on along the roads. Alv 07:55, 16 December 2010 (UTC)
You can actually ride on the sidewalk. It's still stupid. --NE2 23:33, 16 December 2010 (UTC)

Naming seperated cycleways

Sometimes we have really stand-alone cycleways through the country. Sometime they have a kind of name. Using highway=cycleway; name=<nameofthecycleway>. Sometimes there's also the need to draw a track like it is stand-alone cycleway. A kind of Cycletrack (no tag available). I see two difficulties: 1) What name should have this cycletrack (track in cognito ;) ) 2) What do I do to make it clear that the cycletrack belongs to the raod next to it and that routing software will lead me (as a cyclist to the houses that's part of the street.--ZMWandelaar 12:42, 16 December 2010 (UTC)

Retrieved from "http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Talk:Key:cycleway"
Personal tools
Namespaces
Variants
Actions
site
Toolbox