I’ve thought about the issue of bicycle=dismount and how it stands in conflict and I’m awaiting for some more feedback and help (e.g. dismount as suffix or prefix, how to map explicitly signed dismount values, good example images).
Relevant proposal page: Proposal:Vehicle dismount - OpenStreetMap Wiki
If I understand correctly, you want to replace bicycle=dismount (for example, if a bicycle route leads over a footway) with bicycle=no + bicycle:dismount=yes. Yes, there are other cases you’re describing, but the most common use case I can think of is what I described above.
Is that correct?
I’d suggest making this point clearer in the proposal. A possible alternative interpretation is that bicycle:dismount=yes means “you can only pass here with a bicycle by dismounting”, so bicycle=no would be redundant. I don’t think that is what you are suggesting, but as bicycle=dismount is tagged 190,000 times, it would be worth spelling this out explicitly.
I don’t understand the problem with the current tagging. Could you give some explicit examples?
What would be a possible value for bicycle=* if there is a bicycle:dismount=yes?
Basically this, albeit with bicycle:dismount=recommend (or designed) since the signage in that case is explicit.
Partially implied in “tagging” and the fact that yes/designated doesn’t mean only but I do agree I can make it more explicit if not use dismount:bicycle=yes instead (it’s still in the drafting stage!).
A good example is the (as of now) only image provided where it’s ambiguous on whether to tag it as bicycle=designated (due to the fact that the sidepath is a cycleway) or bicycle=dismount (due to the fact that cyclists should dismount there) since most of the time, you find this sign on a pure footway with no cycling allowed.
Unchanged. bicycle:dismount=* (and really, all of :*dismount=*) are first and foremost extension to foot and pushing a bicycle is basically allowed anywhere you can walk on and doesn’t affect cyclibility (see also the above example). I also did consider using dismount:<vehicle> to make it less of a subtype and I still want to solve the order before finally presenting it, though.
This is absolutely not true. On most public footpaths in England & Wales, a bicycle is not a “usual accompaniment” and therefore you have no right to push one.
(There is some dissent from this view but it’s the majority position and, crucially, the opinion of most highway authorities.)
Some examples of current tagging, new tagging and how new tagging is better/allows to solve problems would be useful.
But it must change if it was previously tagged bicycle=dismount?
I understand that, but I think if you want to deprecate a widely use tag, a key part of the drafting would be to explain how we get from that tag to the new scheme.
If I understand correctly, the example you presented is rather unusual - it would be important to explain more common cases also.
I don’t like =dismount , and support this proposal. bicycle=no doesn’t distinguish pushing, so should only mean no riding. Clearly you should be able to push in most motorcycle=no situations, while motorcycle=dismount is basically unused.
On public roads in Germany, if you push a bicycle you’re a pedestrian, and you can do that anywhere pedestrians can go. However, this is not necessarily true for paths on non-public lands. For example, the various large parks in Potsdam allow cycling on marked paths - and on those paths not marked, you may not even push one. (As explained e.g. in Radeln in den Parks und Gärten von Potsdam - ADFC Potsdam)
A data consumer shouldn’t make this assumption in the U.S. either. The cyclist would need to use their personal judgment. Aside from where the signs explicitly ban bicycles…
…there are also plenty of places where you definitely aren’t allowed to carry or walk a bike for safety reasons, such as on an escalator.
There’s also private places where you which you aren’t allowed to carry a bicycle inside for various (e.g. hygienic) reasons. On public ROW OTOH, being forbidden to even push a bicycle is by far the exception, not the norm.
I can think of this private way which is otherwise used as a public ROW and I can remember that no bicycles of any kind are allowed there (not jut cycling) but I have to check the access rules there anyway.
Since this key uses the access keyspace, the requirement to dismount would indeed need to be explicitly signed (or otherwise legally required).
I’m not immediately against the proposal, but as people have already mentioned, the legality of pushing bikes differs in different places. Here in the North, one can always push one’s bike anywhere one can walk, even if bicycles are forbidden by signage (excluding inside most buildings and on escalators, as some have mentioned). Because of this, I find bicycle=no and bicycle:dismount=yes on the same *way somewhat a contradictory (or tautological) tagging. The current scheme (of only a single key-value, i.e. bicycle=no vs. bicycle=dismount) differentiates immediately between places where you can legally (generally and tautologically) push your bike from places where there’s an explicit sign saying that you can only push your bike there—usually on a wide footway or pedestrian way between busy cycleways. But like I said, YMMV.
I see that some appeared. Thanks!
Can you also add case where
?
(I can find image for the first one if that would be helpful)
Also for "Designed foot- and cycleway where cyclists should dismount " case - maybe phrase it as
Designed foot- and cycleway where cyclists are recommended to dismount but you still have legal rights to cycle
?
This all seems like a lot of complication to solve an edge case. As far as I can tell, apart from some arbitrary notion of tidyness, the main advantage of this proposed new tagging scheme is that it provides a way to tag “dismounting is recommended but not required”. That’s a nice-to-have but could be solved in a way that doesn’t involve deprecating a tag that has existed from the earliest days of OSM.
“by far the exception” includes over 100,000 miles of footpaths in England and Wales. Big exception. I don’t know how many miles of “dismount recommended but not compulsory” paths there are across the world, but I’m guessing it’s less than 100,000.
As always, this is going to break a large number of routers which currently rely on bicycle=dismount. If you are proposing this, you also need to propose an outreach programme for data consumers, and commit to doing that outreach yourself (or identifying people to do so). It is not sufficient to just write something on an obscure wiki page and expect data consumers to magically discover it.
After thinking about the tagging a bit more, I think my main problem is that :dismount mixes the obligation to dismount and the legality to push. It might be that everywhere you have signs that you need to push your bike, you are – of course – legally allowed to do so. But if bicycle:dismount=yes means “you are allowed to dismount and push your bike”, I would find bicycle:push, or even bicycle:portage to be a better tag.
I don’t think a sign that says “bicyclists have to dismount and push” needs more tagging than “riding a bicycle is forbidden, pushing is allowed”. This applies to bicycle:dismount=* as well, and would allow to use access-tags as values, so we can even say bicycle=no + bicycle:dismount/push/portage=customers if only customers are allowed to push their bike.
But generally, I do agree that dismount is not a good access-value, so I still applaud you for trying to retire the usage of this value.
I can imagine pathological case where you can walk, you can cycle but you are not allowed to push bicycle.
If we are redesigning tagging anyway, then covering this possibility would be nice.
While there is clearly a problem,
is very much also true. You need to outline and support a mechanism to get from A to B, otherwise it will simply not happen. Right now, I suspect that any proposal that states “This tag deprecates access=dismount in favour of *:dismount=* to separate access (and by extension, designation) with a ridden vehicle and access with a guided / dismounted vehicle (e.g. bicycles)” will simply be voted down.
It’s worth noting that adding bicycle:dismount= (currently 2 uses worldwide) doesn’t conflict with bicycle=, so you could commit to influencing mappers in one region where it is particularly a problem to use both forms of tagging for a (likely long) period.
I wouldn’t bother with a “proposal”; I’d just try and persuade people to use your new form to add extra detail and then come back once you have persuaded a significant community of mappers to do that.
bicycle=dismount could be defined as a shorthand for bicycle=no + bicycle:dismount=designated. Data consumers implementing the proposal should probably interpret it like this anyway for backward compatibility with older data.