We at Zuvolo are building an app aimed at cyclists. We are investigating which mapping technology and services will enable us to identify Points of Interest that are cycling friendly and have either cycling facilities or welcome cyclists.
For example, we may want to create a map that shows all the relevant Points of Interest on a map for cyclists.
E.g. POIs such as including pubs, cafes, coffee shops, restaurants, bakeries, hotels, workshops, bike shops etc…
For each POI we need to know whether they have facilities that include bike parking, rest rooms and toilets, a workshop, cafe, coffee, cakes, lunch, etc…
Has this been done already or would this need to be created? If the latter, what would be the best process for defining the relevant tags and properties in OSM?
There are several methods to tag things in OSM. So it is possible that someone maps the complete area of a pub (Including garden, parking space, building) as an polygon in OSM with the tag amenity=pub. Within this area one can place a point for amenity=bicycle_parking etc.
Other mappers might just place a node for the pub and one for the bicycle parking.
I do not believe there is a way to combine all this info on 1 node.
We typically do not map the menu of the pub, so do not expect to see “coffee”, “cake”, “lunch”.
The other items might have be mapped.
@escada I have noticed that some cafes, restaurants and pubs use a Field=Cuisine.
Once you have created this field, it is then possible to add as many cuisine type as possible. E.g. Pizza, coffee shop, cake, burger, etc…
True, I doubt we can add the menu, but at least it is possible to describe whether a particular pub/cafe/restaurant/etc… supplies certain food.
As for the cycling amenities question, I was just curious whether there was a single tag to mark a POI as cycling_friendly=yes/no. More and more cyclists want to find such locations and plan rides based on this information. The question is what does cycling_friendly mean? I would like it to mean that the establishment “welcomes” cyclists or not.
What evidence, on the ground, would you use to determine the cycling friendly status? If there is no local or national government cycling friendly sticker, and none from a national cycling society, all you can do is to make sure that all the attributes that you can prove, and which imply cycling friendliness, are present and correct.
You cannot tag something as cycling friendly just because that is what you think it is.
Indeed - this has been discussed many times over the years. OSM only records objective, factual information - something where any two people will observe a feature and independently come to the same conclusion. “Cycling-friendly” is a subjective viewpoint and therefore not suitable for OSM.
The cuisine=* tag is meant to describe the general type of food that’s served, not to be an exhaustive list of specific foods. For example, we’d use cuisine=coffee_shop, not cuisine=latte;capuccino;espresso;tea;hot_chocolate;croissants;bagels;sandwiches;…
@Richard@hadw Feedback noted. You make very good points. So the way forwards is to factually note any facilities at a POI e.g. does it have a cafe, does it have bike parking, etc…and use these to determine whether something is “fit for cyclists” or not based on those criteria. I am assuming this is what you advise.
@alester - is it best practice to use cuisine= just once? Is that what you are saying. Or is it OK and acceptable to have multiple values (within reason) ?
Obviously if you feel that a particular place really is best described by something that no data consumer currently processes than do tag it that way - it’s up to the renderers to keep up.