Proposal:Make cycleway:both the default to indicate both sides

Make cycleway:both=* the default to indicate both sides
Proposal status:	Draft (under way)
Proposed by:	tordans
Tagging:	cycleway:both=* Data item
Applies to:
Definition:	Make cycleway:both=* the recommended default to indicate that the value applies to both sides. Deprecate the key cycleway without any side for this usage.
Statistics:
Draft started:	2024-06-30

Proposal

Make cycleway:both=* the recommended default to indicate that the value applies to both sides of the way. Deprecate the key cycleway=* without any side subkey for this use case.

This change only applies to values that are usually applied to one or more sides of a way. Values like crossing will continue to use the tag without any side subkey.

Rationale

The tagging of separate values for each side of a way is well established with side subkeys like cycleway:left=* and cycleway:right=*. However, the tagging that indicates both sides of a way is less clear for historic reasons. This leaves mappers and data consumers in a situation where the definition of cycleway=* (no side subkey) is unclear:

• It could mean "a cycleway somewhere on the way."
• It could mean "a cycleway on the primary direction of the way" (e.g., on the right in many countries or when used on a dual carriageway).
• It could mean "a cycleway on both sides of the way."

The first two definitions are more historic, from a time when OSM had less precise data. The latter definition is somewhat enforced by modern editors that show the key in a UI that makes it explicit that the value applies to both sides.

This unclear definition causes issues with tagging presets and tag updates because the two tags (with and without a side subkey) cannot confidently be considered the same.

Instead, we should make an effort to migrate the cycleway=* to cycleway:both=* or its corresponding left and right tags.

History

The wiki page on cycleway:both has a bit of history on the tag:

The tag has been in use since 2010.

Its usage has significantly increased in 2017 when it became used by StreetComplete which started asking about cycleways(…).

Current Usage

• StreetComplete treats the cycleway tag as the same as cycleway:both but tags cycleway:both.
• iD Editor only supports cycleway and hides all data tagged as cycleway:both. It presents the cycleway tag in a UI that shows it as left/right and merges left/right values into cycleway if the same values are tagged.

This discrepancy between StreetComplete and iD alone is why it is worth improving the current tagging recommendations.

• The wiki page Key:cycleway does not discuss sides in detail and does not mention the issue described here.
• The wiki page Key:cycleway:both discusses the ambiguity of cycleway.
• The OSM Tag History for cycleway=no and cycleway:both=no shows that the both variant is used much more.

Stats:

• https://taginfo.openstreetmap.org/keys/cycleway#values
• https://taginfo.openstreetmap.org/keys/cycleway%3Aboth#values

Value	cycleway=…	cycleway:both=…	Note
no	cycleway=no $1% $1% $1% $1% More details at taginfo More details at taginfo 2024-07-01: 296.789 ways	cycleway:both=no $1% $1% $1% $1% More details at taginfo More details at taginfo 2024-07-01: 1.342.256 ways
separate	cycleway=separate $1% $1% $1% $1% More details at taginfo More details at taginfo 2024-07-01: 22.159 ways	cycleway:both=separate $1% $1% $1% $1% More details at taginfo More details at taginfo 2024-07-01: 27.019 ways
lane	cycleway=lane $1% $1% $1% $1% More details at taginfo More details at taginfo 2024-07-01: 307.870 ways	cycleway:both=lane $1% $1% $1% $1% More details at taginfo More details at taginfo 2024-07-01: 64.212 ways
track	cycleway=track $1% $1% $1% $1% More details at taginfo More details at taginfo 2024-07-01: 73.770 ways	cycleway:both=track $1% $1% $1% $1% More details at taginfo More details at taginfo 2024-07-01: 11.607 ways
shared_lane	cycleway=shared_lane $1% $1% $1% $1% More details at taginfo More details at taginfo 2024-07-01: 76.652 ways	cycleway:both=shared_lane $1% $1% $1% $1% More details at taginfo More details at taginfo 2024-07-01: 18.935 ways
crossing	cycleway=crossing $1% $1% $1% $1% More details at taginfo More details at taginfo 2024-07-01: 149.498 ways	cycleway:both=crossing $1% $1% $1% $1% More details at taginfo More details at taginfo 2024-07-01: 0 ways	Crossing does have concept of left/right, which is why it will continue to use the cycleway=crossing tag.

Features/Pages affected

• Update all Key:cycleway and Key:cycleway:both wiki pages to explain the new recommendation and hint at the deprecation.
• Update the OSM Wikidata Items with the deprecation.
• Ask OSM editors to add deprecation rules that prompt reevaluation of features or replacement of the tagging.

External discussions

• This proposal was created after discussions and deliberations in the Verkehrswende-Meetup.
• It was also inspired by work on the Radverkehrsatlas project.
• There was some discussion on an id-tagging-schema issue: https://github.com/openstreetmap/id-tagging-schema/issues/1025.

Comments

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