See green stripe of cycleway in the distance: runs adjacent to the pavement, separated by bollards.
Arguably more associated with the roadway in the middle section.
Either end of the building it’s more associated with the footway than the roadway, with through routes for those modes where cars can’t go.
Seems like an edge case: what would you do?
Looks like a simple cycleway:left=lane; cycleway:lane=exclusive addition to the service road to me, so it’s currently correctly tagged. I would personally not have mapped the Northern equivalent way (Way: 1272802046 | OpenStreetMap) separately as it’s part of the service highway.
What does, however need changing IMO is to remove the access=destination tags (unless customer-only access to the site is signed) and the service=driveway tags (they’re not driveways; see wiki on parking aisles).
Also, I’ve got a personal campaign against cycleways with segregated=no on them in UK. I feel these should all be footways to better reflect the legal hierarchy of pedestrians over cyclists in the UK. Similarly, if it’s a footpath=sidewalk, it should also primarily be a highway=footway, not =cycleway (this one is quite a mess of inappropriate tags inc. route name on way, cycleway=segregated?, superfluous access tags: Way: Bretton Centre cycle path (455377566) | OpenStreetMap)
Please don’t tag for the renderer. What you’re doing here is hiding cycleways in OSM Carto. If it’s signed with TSRGD diagram 956, it’s a shared cycle track and should tagged as highway=cycleway. Doing this would result in large sections of purpose-built shared cycle tracks on the Sustrans National Cycle Network being mis-tagged as highway=footway. Highway Code rules H1-H3 are implicit on all roads in the UK and we shouldn’t be using this as a pretext to change mapping in the UK.
If you wish to deprecate the use of highway=cycleway for shared cycle tracks, please start a formal proposal.
Apologies, @eteb3 , if this is going off topic. I’ll take it on to another thread if it develops further.
By my understanding, just including a way in a route shouldn’t affect the primary tags. If NCN routes are using shared foot/cycleways, then it’s surely more valuable to show these as shared footways to highlight stretches which would benefit from a highway improvement? I don’t see a problem with having a cycle route on a footway as long as the appropriate bicycle=* tags are used.
To clarify, I do not wish to deprecate highway=cycleway, I simply want to make sure the description of highway types in the UK is accurately captured in the OSM database. Shared foot/cycleways in the UK are very commonly pavements (highway=footway, footway=sidewalk) which have had cycle access subsequently added but simply adding a few signs. This must be the cheapest way for a highways authority in the UK to improve (or simply appear to improve) the provision for cyclists but often doesn’t significantly improve safe cycle routing as cyclists have to give way at every junction, and also reduces the space for pedestrians. I believe it’s important to highlight the difference between these provisions in the UK as they have an effect on routing times, safe route choice, evidence for active travel campaigners, etc.
I fear I don’t follow, @rskedgell. Surely, being mindful of what displays in OSM Carto is the dictionary definition of tagging for the renderer?
I wrote “purpose-built shared cycle track” because that’s what I meant. If you take the Bristol and Bath Cycle Path, or many other cycle tracks on former railway alignments, they were built with Sustrans funding as unsegregated shared cycle tracks by design. Tagging them as anything other than highway=cycleway would be absurd.
Then leave them as they are. A way in the UK tagged as highway=cycleway has implicit foot=yes access unless tagged otherwise. Guidance on pedestrian priority is irrelevant, as highways where cyclists and pedestrians are allowed but pedestrians do not have priority do not exist in the UK.
I agree. Adding cycleway=sidewalk and tagging width=* or est_width=* would be useful in order to identify low-quality cycle infrastructure created by little more than adding signs. Changing them to highway=footway because of a misunderstanding of how pedestrian priority should be mapped (it shouldn’t, unless it differs from the default) may not be quite as helpful.
Before you, as a relatively new user, unilaterally decide that everyone else has been wrong for years, maybe it would be appropriate to discuss it first?
Both of these statements are true. We have different OSM tags for saying:
way is this most like (footway, cycleway, bridleway` etc.)foot, bicycle etc. and any designation=public_bridleway or similar)If cyclists really are basically being legally encouraged to cycle on an unsegregated footway we absolutely should tag that as such, but that’s very different to e.g. fairly wide unsegregated long-distance Sustrans paths - and (near me at least) the majority by length are the latter rather than the former.
^ This is very much the logic that I’m following.
Apologies, I originally read that as any way that had even a minor signage added so as to ‘upgrade’ it to NCN standard. Paths constructed / renovated to account for cyclists, making good provision for their speed / visibility / elevation requirements are unquestionably cycleways.
Regarding cycleway=sidewalk, I’d only ever possibly use this if I really didn’t want to map the highway=footway;footway=sidewalk separately. Using it as a description on a highway=cycleway doesn’t follow semantically to me. Seems like many agree judging by its indefinite wiki. Thankfully, I’ve not encountered that situation yet.
This is wrong. You can not create cycle access to a UK footway (pavement/sidewalk) by adding signs to the footway. It is prohibited to use a vehicle on a footway in the UK. Signs by themselves can not change that. The legislation that creates Footways does not provide a means to allow pedal cycles on Footways. To clarify, by footway I mean a way running adjacent to a carriageway within the road, what we commonly would see as pavement with a kerb. eg Mapillary Link .
To lawfully allow pedal cycles to travel along the way designated as Footway, the Highways Authority must legally remove the Footway and replace it with a Cycle Track. This is done through the HIghways Act 1980. First the Footway is removed under Section 66, then Section 65(1) is used to create a statutory Cycle Track. This “way” is then regualated by the Cycle Tracks Act 1984. This process does not need public consultation and is not advertised. If the road is new it will simply be designated as Cycle Track from the outset.
This Shared way is a Cycle Track. They may be bad quality, but they are highway=cycleway.
There are ways managed as Foot Paths that allow cycling, or tolerate cycling. These should be tagged a highway=footway & bicycle=yes. Below is a link to such a footway showin photograph.
Well, there’s something new I learned today, thank you! Is there a OSM-compatible data source available to check whether a footway=sidewalk has had this change applied to it?
I don’t think that changes much in practice, though, as we’re discussing highway=cycleway, ie. the OSM primary tag, and not Cycle Tracks (the legal classification of a highway). If the OSM community were to decide that a highway=cycleway requires a legal classification of Cycle Track, we’d end up having to know whether the road were adopted by the local highways authority, which the original area in question most likely isn’t.
Seems that the actual point of discussion has been adequately covered, so I just wanted to chime in on this point.
Can we have a permanent moratorium on the use of this phrase and equivalents? In my short time within the OSM community, it’s already become quite clear to me that this phrase sees more use as a ‘thought-terminating cliché’ than it does as an actual legitimate point of constructive criticism.
I’m not even kidding — in threads that I’ve read over the past few months, just slightly over 50% of uses of this phrase that I’ve seen have not been justified at all.
Any time someone dares to offer an opinion on how something ‘should’ be tagged when there’s no (apparent) consensus, someone from the opposing camp will immediately swing in with an accusation of ‘tagging for the renderer’, regardless of whether it’s true or not.
I feel like this was a pretty egregious example (even though intended in good faith), as it was pretty obvious that mstrbrid was not in any way suggesting anything that could constitute tagging for the renderer.
Notwithstanding that ‘don’t tag for the renderer’ is an important principle to follow when actually mapping, it’s not a useful principle to proffer when having a constructive debate about an actual tagging choice (unless the person is obviously new and actively looking for advice).
He was suggesting that tagging should be changed based on his opinion that pedestrian priority should dictate how cycleways should be mapped. As pedestrians always have priority on shared cycle tracks in the UK, it would render the OSM Carto layer useless for cyclists. That really would be egregious.
As a routing engine, we take the view that:
highway=cycleway + foot=yes should represent infrastructure that is primarily designed for, and is of a quality suitable for, cycling, which also pedestrians are not forbidden to use.
highway=footway + bicycle=yes should represent pavements where a blue sign has inadequtely been added in order to legalise cycling, but is really designed as pedestrian infrastructure.
Obviously in both cases these result in foot/bicycle both = yes, but there is a subtlety as to what they actually represent.
We give them different base weightings (though other factors like width, etc., are then applied).