Can you give example, ideally with a photo or with link to street side view?
how cycle lane is separated from carriageway there? Is there anything more than paint separating bicycles from cars?
the same for OpenStreetMap
it looks like it is on-road bicycle lane
do you mean “painted lane(s) is(are) the only separation” by “not being protected”?
EDIT: I opened Note: 4695526 | OpenStreetMap
What actually is the FHWA? Is it some local organisation where you are?
Sounds like https://highways.dot.gov/ (Federal Highway Administration).
though I would phrase it as clarification/explanation - along lines of “official definition of sidewalk by $INSTITUTION diverges from OpenStreetMap one, you should use OpenStreetMap one when mapping in OpenStreetMap”
Logically it resolves as being equivalent to sidewalk=no when there’s no sidewalk separately mapped.
I would argue that local definitions matter much more than OSM. Mapping data should match local customs, local rules.
If a city calls something a bike lane why isn’t it a bike lane?
If you don’t know what one of the world’s largest road standard setters is, the FHWA, you’re mapping things wrong in the country.
There’s a flush median painted in white. In the US, when you see those \ in a space, no vehicles are permitted to enter or cross that space.
Take it a step further. This is THE official biking map for the entire region. Everyone sends data into them and they produce the best resource for 2 million people. This is the
They call a bike lane with just a single white line a bike lane. That means it’s a separate thing worth calling out and including on the map. It’s not separated, no, but it’s unique from the car lanes.
I might disagree but in the context of the regional standard people will expect the line to exist on all maps as a unique line from the car line.
What sidewalks and bike lanes and other paths are is not one monolithic thing you can define worldwide. The standard needs to be messy, to be flexible so you can’t work to one clean standard.
It’s something you see on the ground. There’s parks you can tell what’s a sidewalk and what’s a path because they use different materials. I know of multiple parks where that’s the only difference. Loose Park in Kansas City has two trails parallel to each other and one is a sidewalk and one is a trail and they sometimes merge and split.
It’s the bike lane aspect, when they merge and split it doesn’t not become separate bike lane unique from the street because it’s not designed a specific way It’s still a bike lane that’s a unique area on the ground for bikes. one bike lane near me has been upgraded twice from unprotected to concrete barriers, it’s the same lane in the same place so it’s the same line you follow
that point about only paint being used to define a lane as protected or not is why things are so messy. we have thousands of unique standards in one country. each state has one, counties have them, cities have them. Most follow FHWA but vary. We can’t even decide on the design of curb cuts and the angle of pedestrian crossings, there’s more than one protected bike lane standard. I’ve seen pedestrian crossings with bike boxes, seriously. I wish that one was captures in aerial views, it’s going make the weirdest upgrade of a crosswalk to a full bike path to end at nothing you’ll see. I forgot to note which streets it was at but it’s fully non-standard
note that definitions are often divergent between areas and sometimes official authorities clearly lie about reality
for example we are not taking Pakistan claims about where Pakistan is as being more important than on the ground situation
we are mapping buildings and neighborhoods that are officially not existing
we are also not mapping forests that are officially existing but were illegally logged and cut down
if city claims that they built road/cycleway/bridge and it is in fact not existing, it should not be mapped as existing
if country claims that they have not built road/cycleway/bridge/military base and it is in fact existing, it can be mapped as existing (disclaimer: this may be illegal as defined by some authorities and you may prefer to not do that if within their reach, for example I am not travelling to North Korea any time soon)
if city claims they build park but they in fact built a parking lot, a parking lot should be mapped
if city reclassified concrete parking lot as a forest it is still not a forest
official data is routinely wrong or conflicting with other official data
that makes sense
that makes sense
and it is mappable, likely with Key:cycleway:right - OpenStreetMap Wiki and/or Key:cycleway:left - OpenStreetMap Wiki tags
actually Way: North Wyandotte Street (514326746) | OpenStreetMap already has cycleway=lane
But it should not be mapped as a separated cycleway, as it is a bicycle lane rather than a separated cycleway. This is a relatively agreed on thing in OSM mapping, so I would advise you to familiarize it with it before rewriting OSM wiki.
people are free to make own maps from OSM data, showing data however they want - including prominent display of cycleway lanes
for example OpenStreetMap map style shows cycleway=lane tag as blue lines
While we US mappers are generally all aware of the US Federal Highway Administration (FHWA), OSM is a global project and this is a global forum. Fully qualifying names goes a long way towards international cooperation and understanding. If you wish to speak on US specific matters using shorthand that other US mappers will understand, United States is a good place for that. This topic is in the international General talk category where mappers from around the world participate.
right, and I’m saying it’s a unique area in a physical space.
It’s a separate space on the road that keeps bikes out of the car lane and cars out of the bike lane. a solid white line says it’s unique space to stay out of. you don’t cross a solid white line in a vehicle
there’s a great example along lakeshore drive in Chicago.
41.890905, -87.613746
the solid white line says “do not exit this space” and as a result this piece of pavement has two one way sidewalks and a cycle path down the middle it’s a weird design
move north to here
41.893556, -87.614107
and you’ll see how when the pavement widens they add further separation and control. but the basic control didn’t change in any sense. it’s still two segregated spaces
it’s not a path in a road lane, there’s not one line everyone is following, it’s a unique space where the city didn’t put a gap in the pavement
the bike lane didn’t stop or start. the pedestrian path didn’t stop or start. there’s no tag you could put that makes either not exist as a unique line for a while. the width of the pavement and the paint on the ground just changed
that’s the bike lane problem. it exists as a separate thing unless it’s a painted sharrow. so all bike lanes should be a separate thing on the map in turn.
so by that standard, what is and isn’t a sidewalk or path is messy. you have to assess each situation independent of a single monolithic standard
we’re building a streetcar expansion to this same idea. what is and isn’t a car lane practically on the ground is going to come down to if the line is solid or dashed. it’s going to be a protected lane, changing within each block to allow cars to turn right from the streetrcar lane
I am not sure whether USA Highway authorities should be treated so reverently on topic of sidewalks. USA has many successes, but walkability of their cities is rarely considered as one of them.
More broadly, OSM started in United Kingdom and many tagging standards are based on local peculiarities of UK and sometimes broader Europe. USA influence is much more limited.
And in general local official/legal definitions are not overriding OSM tagging definitions. For example what is legally considered as a building in Poland by local law or what is considered as sidewalk by FHWA does not change how we map things in OpenStreetMap.
Though sometimes there are some extra tags about legal status of some things.
and it is not mapped, in OpenStreetMap, as separate line
in the same way as a carriageway with multiple lanes for cars is mapped as a single line
for example motorway carriageway that has HOV lane, separate by painted white continuous line not crossed by vehicles in typical operation, 3 regular lanes and turn lane is mapped as a single highway=motorway line
not as 3 or 5 lines.
Legal definitions have to override OSM definitions.
39.164523, -94.599218
what if I told you it’s signed so the inside lane is how you get onto the SB freeway, not the outside lane? (it’s painted so the inside lane goes to the freeway and you yield from the outside lane if not getting on it) what if I told you lanes change places, where inside lanes become outside lanes and new inside lanes appear
That’s not to UK standards. I’ve driven UK roundabouts, they’re usually decent. This one is horribly designed. but you can’t map it to UK standards as a result.
here you go. it’s actually the drainage ditch and shoulder, the shoulder is past the ditch but it functions as a sidewalk. it’s the asphalt from a former road repaving project, they didn’t repave it about 10 years ago when the road was torn up to the base
39.172743, -94.576739
there’s a project to improve this road and put real sidewalks on both sides.
people bike on it too
can you explain what you mean by that?
do you think that if there is say unpaved road and official data claims that it is paved then we must map it as a paved one?
do you think that if some country officially states its territorial claims then we are obligated to map borders in exactly this way?
do you think that if government classifies bicycle lanes as being the same thing as searated cycleways then we must map it in this way?
we have tagging schema for that (turn:lanes)
I’m
that would be the inside lane of the roundabout. it’s two lanes wide
it’s also the thru lane of the roundabout simultaneously
so how so you map it to be both at the same time
see Key:turn - OpenStreetMap Wiki
I applied tagging in Way: 922759888 | OpenStreetMap with turn:lanes=left;through|through following on the ground situation.
Note that I mapped what appears to be there - if official data claims that there is something else there it is utterly irrelevant. If aerial is outdated and on the ground situation is different, feel free to fix it.
that actually does exist for sidewalks. I drive past an example of this multiple times a week
google street view for
6 NE Briarcliff Pkwy, Kansas City, MO 64116
look at the sidewalk under the tree, 2019 it’s clearer
it’s a mud sidewalk. not joking, I’m not sure if there’s no sidewalk or the pavement settled so much it’s mud now. given a new sewer entrance was put in looks like settling. the backlog of sidewalk work hasn’t fixed it in a decade. the city has it marked as existing as a continual paved sidewalk
so do we mark it as dirt or pavement for the two squares because the city says it exists?
