How do we deal with bicycle routes where someone can take the train as alternative?
This is an example of imho bad mapping: https://www.openstreetmap.org/relation/9629396
A cycling route over an existing railway line is not what I want to see on my cycling maps!
Is route=shuttle_train a good alternative instead of route=bicycle? See also https://taginfo.openstreetmap.org/tags/route=shuttle_train for the usage on OSM
Where a bike route includes the train, I strongly believe that the railway should form part of the route relation. Take for example the Alpe-Adria Radweg: https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alpe_Adria_Radweg . A train passage is part of the route: it would be wrong to suggest that it wasn’t. Routers need this information to be able to follow this cycle route (indeed, I’m planning to support this in the next cycle.travel update).
It would seem sensible to me to represent this using a relation member role, for example ‘shuttle’. This could also be used where a bike route includes a bus shuttle across a bridge (there’s at least one part of the East Coast Greenway for which this is the case).
Where it’s an alternative to the route I don’t have a strong opinion.
If it’s a matter of what you want to see on your cycling maps, you can just filter this out, surely? I don’t want to see bike routes over the sea on my maps, so I filter them out: compare https://cycle.travel/map?lat=50.1945&lon=-0.6784&zoom=8 with https://cycling.waymarkedtrails.org/#?map=8!50.697!0.3034 .
Thanks for your input Richard. Using “role” seems a good suggestion, do we need to put it on the ways/members or can it be used for the whole relation (as long as the whole relation is a shuttle or ferry connection)?