Vestigial "Pacific Coast Bicycle Route"

Communities United States
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I’m being careful here to thread many needles simultaneously, as the plot is historical, thick and somewhat complex.

California, through its Department of Transportation Caltrans, has recently applied to AASHTO to essentially complete (Phase II after Phase I already approved from Oregon to Daly City, south of San Francisco) United States Bicycle Route 95, extending from Daly City / Pacifica to its border with México (at Imperial Beach).

There is at least one long-existent-in-OSM “Pacific Coast Bicycle Routes” (PCBRs) which are either vestigial or proprietary, which USBR 95 in California is deliberately intended (as stated by its architect) to replace (USBR 95 replaces the proprietary ACA version, AND the “devolved-from-Caltrans-to-local-jurisdictions” version). One of these is the Adventure Cycling Association so-named route (private, deliberately not entered into OSM as it is proprietary and copyrighted, which would be in violation of OSM’s ODbL). The other is a route which used to be administered by Caltrans, but has devolved into being administered by counties and cities which were included along the route. These numerous belts and spurs along the route might remain in OSM as (purple) regional route segments, rather than the (red) “national trunk” of USBR 95. I do not say that as “tagging for the renderer,” this is beyond that.

In effect, this devolved route (not the ACA proprietary route, as USBR 95 intends to replace that) is little more than vestigial, having been essentially replaced by USBR 95 (California’s Phase II version now submitted to AASHTO). In OSM, there are northbound (https://osm.org/relation/7063452) and southbound (https://www.osm.org/relation/53722) relations as well as a super-relation (Relation: ‪Pacific Coast Bike Route‬ (‪7063453‬) | OpenStreetMap) tying these together.

What I propose is to simply delete the members of the now-vestigial relation members now overlapping with USBR 95 (after it is Approved by AASHTO, of course). This seems “cleanest,” though I welcome perspectives there may be merit in doing something of an OpenHistoricalMap (OHM) interpretation method of tagging PCBR as it fades away (is replaced by USBR 95 in California from Pacifica to México).

Really, I’m simply opening a discussion. I think what will end up happening is that “bits of purple belt and spurs called PCB(R) along USBR 95 in California will sometimes show up as locally-devolved-and-administrated components of a vestigial route glommed onto the newer USBR 95, which replaced this.”

I am in listening mode. I’m not terribly familiar with OHM principles and tagging. It seems both easier and correct to simply “duck out” those elements in the purple route (network=rcn) which are being “replaced” (superseded) by the USBR 95 red route (network=ncn). Thanks for any feedback offered.

Edit: An additional step which may make thing easier is this. Vestigial ACA routes are now (since 2012) tagged network=rcn. We might “further demote” the vestigial PCB segments to lcn (as “low as they go”), as they (the “devolved” segments) are (to the extent they ACTUALLY are!) administered by counties or cities…“lower” in the administrative hierarchy. That is, compared to international, national and regional routes. It all makes sense, really; demoting from purple (mid) to blue (low) while red (high, national) replaces (supersedes) allows heads to further nod. Feedback welcome.

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Would it be fair to say that the Pacific Coast route is just a common naming practice at this point? It would be analogous to how plenty of streets along the historic El Camino Real retain that name, without necessarily implying that a coherent route remains. If so, then perhaps OSM shouldn’t maintain a route relation for the Pacific Coast route, as relations aren’t categories and routes aren’t merely collections of similar things.

As far as I know, there isn’t a formal process by which a numbered route “replaces” a named route. The two can coexist with substantial concurrencies. If the name falls out of use due to the establishment of the numbered route, then the named route’s relation can be repurposed or, more correctly, deleted. But as El Camino Real demonstrates, a name can persist independently of a named route.

Consider what happens when a building is stormed down and replaced by another. Sometimes a mapper will reuse the preexisting way to represent the new building, adding some vertices and deleting others to achieve the desired shape, but this reuse is for the mapper’s convenience only. They aren’t necessarily implying that the old building has been meticulously transformed into the new one through adaptive reuse.

I think there’s a wide recognition that the three-letter acronym values of network=* are a flawed tagging scheme rooted in an aversion to typing. The international community worked around the ambiguity by backronyming lcn to mean “local cycle network” rather than “London Cycle Network”, and the U.S. community worked around the oversimplicity with cycle_network=*. With a bit more foresight, maybe we would’ve chosen a workaround that can accommodate walking trails as well.

Ideally, we would’ve recognized much earlier that a given trail segment’s importance doesn’t necessarily correspond to the kind of administrative area it traverses, and that a given route’s importance doesn’t necessarily correspond to level of government that designates it. network=*cn makes both poor assumptions simultaneously.

We should’ve decoupled trail functional classification from route designation a long time ago, just as we did for highway routes. It may not be too late, if we think of network=*cn as a moribund tagging scheme along with crossing=* on crossings or ref=* on roadways. But any change would be aspirational unless we can convince the established cycling renderers to go along with it.

Which brings us to OpenHistoricalMap. Nothing is stopping us from mapping the former state-coordinated Pacific Coast route along trails and roadways, other than having to map those trails and roadways first. I think you’d be in a better position than most to map these features, because of your substantial knowledge of their historical development. As you map the ways, you can begin to cobble together the associated route relations. This discussion about evolving roadways may help you settle on a workable modeling strategy:

Since we know network=*cn is so problematic in OSM, we might as well avoid it in OHM in favor of some other approach, such as a hierarchical network=* format that resembles cycle_network=*. Nothing renders recreational route relations as in OSM, so we have plenty of time to figure out a solution for functional classification that looks very different than OSM’s status quo.

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Thank you for your as-usual-very-thoughtful reply, Minh.

I now ponder much and may have more to say here in a day or two.

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I would suggest to create a new relation for USBR95, without involving the existing PCB-relations, since the USBR95 isn’t liken a new version of the PCB.

Not sure whether it’s useful, but I’m thinking it might be better to transfer the PCB into a network=US:ACA or something similar. If they remain in the *cn schema, they supposed to be rather ncn, since they are on national scale, rather than regional or local. At least based on European usage of that tag. If this data is illegal or “outdated”, we should remove these relations from OSM.

If you need support, adding the additional parts of the USBR95, let me know.

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Henning, the new relations for USBR 95 are denoted in United States Bicycle Route System - OpenStreetMap Wiki , the Proposed section (95 is near the end of the table).

As I said, there are TWO routes named PCB(R): the “vestigial” route which is what is purported to be in OSM. This is the “devolved from Caltrans to counties and cities” version. There is ALSO a version of PCB(R) which is ACA’s (copyrighted, proprietary) route, which is exactly what USBR 95 is specifically designed to “replace” (according to numerous discussions I have had with the System’s decades-long architect). Not only would it be inappropriate to specifically enter the ACA route (OSM does not have authorization to do this and their entry would be a violation of our ODbL), but, again, USBR 95 is designed to be a 1-for-1 replacement of ACA’s PCBR.

While there are some historical segments of other ACA routes (Underground Railroad and Transamerica Trail), it was worked out between OSM and ACA in the early twenty-teens that it was OK for these (older, possibly not even correct to today’s routings) to remain in OSM as REGIONAL (network=rcn) routes, not national (ncn) routes, entered state-at-a-time to further emphasize they are not meant to be “at national scale” (OSM in the USA has several “quasi-national” bike routes for these; see our wiki’s Talk pages regarding some of this history). These ACA routes have been (deliberately) diminishing in OSM as more and more of these segments become directly incorporated into OSM as USBRs, for example the entirety of USBR 76 in Kansas was originally a component of ACA’s Transamerica Trail data which virtually 100% was re-entered as USBR 76 when AASHTO Approved this route in Kansas.

As Minh makes some excellent points above, and I still ponder what best effects might be enjoyed by OSM data consumers as eventual solutions, it still remains not-yet-clear to me what the best course of action forward might be. The three levels of national, regional and local have been taken about as far as they can (or beyond, to the level of abuse and/or confusion), with quite a great deal of pulling and stretching their semantics over the years, such that they are “less meaningful” than they might once have been. Hence, the US (and other parts of the world) have started to alleviate this with cycle_network=US:* tagging.

It is also why I suggested in my last-minute edit to my original post that the vestigial components of PCB(R) which remain as minor belts-and-spurs hanging off of USBR 95 (as it is Approved) be changed from their present network=rcn tagging (which seems to have been assigned as a misunderstanding that this route represented the ACA route, which it does not) to network=lcn tagging, to better emphasize that these “vestigial route remnants” are “locally” administered (by counties and cities).

I’ll keep pondering, this topic can continue with suggestions (please) and eventually, we’ll settle on a solution good for everybody.

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Or a week or two, or a month or two or a year or two. No rush. Meanwhile, we listen.

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I think you’re used to me answering in this fashion by now, but cycle.travel does already mess around with US bike route network values a bit - the Pacific Coast and Mississippi River Trail routes get an uplift to NCN status (because they’re about as national as it gets).

The network tag is uniquely challenging in the US and I’m considering rewriting c.t’s handling more extensively - the European assumption that an ncn route deserves more prominent cartography and a higher routing uplift doesn’t at all hold true in the US. I would ideally like to rig up something such that the Katy Trail, or the Pacific Coast, or the Chesapeake & Ohio Canal, or the Great Allegheny Passage, get a more prominent treatment, whereas the worst parts of the East Coast Greenway are demoted to the fires of hell where they belong. But there’s a good week’s work in there at least.

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Do you think these boosts and penalties would be subjective or context-dependent, or would there be an opportunity to make them more data-driven? I’m definitely not against reforming recreational network values in OSM; we just need to do it deliberately while keeping data consumers like you in the loop.

Mappers in some regions have already started using alternative subkeys such as network:type and network:guid to deconflict the two purposes of network while avoiding the mode-specific bias of cycle_network. We could adopt these keys in parallel with the existing network and cycle_network tags, but I don’t think this addresses the problem you face in imparting meaning from network tags.

I question whether we should even preserve a strong coupling between route membership and functional classification. Look at how far we’ve come since we abandoned the idea that highway=primary is exclusive to U.S. Routes and highway=secondary is exclusive to state routes.

What if, while we’re at it, we were to adopt something like cycleway:hierarchy on individual ways? Then the tiny city park access path forming Ohio State Bike Route 3E and the streets along the vestigial, long-forgotten Ohio State Bike Route B could both receive a lower classification than the Little Miami Scenic Trail, which forms the backbone of the region’s cycling infrastructure. Routers would no longer have to wonder whether a “national cycling route” is little more than a figment of someone’s imagination.

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I question whether we should even preserve a strong coupling between route membership and functional classification.

Indeed - as always, I’d rather that tagging was verifiable and objective rather than corralling things into yet more arbitrary scales. If I’m given the information to make my own mind up about what’s an important route and what isn’t, that’s ideal.

Bike route relations in the US are a rather confusing mishmash of local trail names (usually signed somehow, I think), names adopted to market a wider network (often not signed?), long-distance routes (usually not signed?) and the USBRS (also usually not signed?). It’s kind of hard to pick out which ones mean anything to users, and the tagging doesn’t help.

So, for example, the Dutchess Rail Trail in NY is part of the Empire State Trail, and my guess is that both names are used. The Hennepin Canal Parkway (IL) is part of the Grand Illinois Trail - is the latter name used much? The Nickel Plate Trail (IN) is part of USBRS 35, but does anyone actually refer it as the latter? And so on.

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I didn’t realize it was this bad in the USA regarding the network=* tag as it is applied to route=bicycle relations. I’ve seen Minh’s often-very-clever characterizations of it here and there, which are pretty, yet still confuse in what they display.

I can say that the USBRS is “about 25% signed, and growing” and that each USBR is a real, codified-in-an-official-application-by-a-state-department-of-transportation route, approved by our national organization (AASHTO). As that is precisely how they are entered into OSM. USBRs are as pretty-darn-real as it gets in the USA for a bicycle route at a national level. They are not a figment of imagination, but of DOTs and AASHTO. Now, if only we could get the darn things better signed. A typically American response when it comes to improved bicycle infrastructure: “Better signage is ongoing as funding allows.”

What we call “quasi-national” routes (like ECG, MRT, 9-11 NMT…), those are signed “somewhat,” and the whole quasi-national categorization was (and is) a wonky, coined, glommed-together-so-it-fits-into-the-hierarchy somewhere hack (for lack of a better word). Regional (rcn) is even worse (though there are some numbered STATE-level numbered rcn routes, like in the state of Georgia, that fit nicely here), rcn includes the vestigial ACA routes which “snuck in” (via GPX track, sorta / “barely legal” when it comes to our ODbL, as the original data are copyrighted, but I have smoothed some feathers within ACA so they are “OK, not thrilled” that their sometimes-older-and-obsolete data are in OSM, because “it’s gonna happen”).

And while our wikis (USBRS, United States/Bicycle Networks) attempt to try to denote all this as human-readable text, I can see how it remains confusing.

At least we’re talking about it amongst ourselves, so thanks for continuing good dialog.

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Signage on the USBRS is in a much better state today than ten years ago. The system has had something of a renaissance, but this doesn’t necessarily translate into funding for improved infrastructure beyond signs.

I’ll admit to some bias here, because I started mapping in the Miami Valley in Ohio, which has some of the best-connected rail trails in the country. Ohio’s second-generation state bike route system, a central part of the USBRS, owes its existence to a cyclist who documented long-standing and emerging trails on his website, popularizing the idea of them as a connected system and proposing a numbering system that caught on. Park operators collaborated with volunteers to put up wayfinding signs, and eventually the state highway department got on board. Today, the USBRS and state bike route shields get bolted onto the side of the Miami Valley signs, if at all.

I think it would be great if we could get to the point where bike route relations are primarily useful for rendering shields or drawing lines on a route-centric map, but would not unduly influence routing. Then it would be no problem if some of these routes are designated by private entities or secondary public entities but still meet our verifiability standards – like the Miami Valley trail network.

For this to work, we need more of the members of these relations to have details about bike lanes, surface, and so on. Until we can gather all that information, something like the proposed cycleway:hierarchy scheme would let us broadly characterize segments of each route.

By analogy, we still haven’t comprehensively tagged roadways with surface, speed limit, and other fine-grained details that would be useful to automotive routers, but they can still fall back to functional highway classification to some extent.

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In my understanding, the existing hierarchy only makes sense in a dense network, like it’s existing in Central Europe. Where a cyclist benefits from a route defined nationwide, that he can follow that router for a longer distance. Like it’s easier to follow 500 miles on the same route than changing the route every 10 miles.

From a long distance cyclist perspective, that’s the only reason to display them differently.

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While thinking about the US-routes, I was thinking about the rail trails in Michigan as a “regional” route, where routes within a city I would consider as “local” and USBRS-trails as “national”. Though that might be driven by my European background.

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The sign you link is an outstanding example (especially in the USA) of a local (geographically relatively small) jurisdiction taking excellent assertive action to insist, really, in a beautiful, clear way (the sign) that “people around here deeply and obviously care to orient their hiking/biking/equestrian (non-automobile) trail users with best-in-class signage.” That rocks.

Other places don’t often do as well or better, but we can all learn from such shining stars. These “seeds that have grown into mighty trees” can inspire others to plant, nurture and grow such trees ourselves, in other realms, in other levels of a jurisdictional hierarchy. And guess what? We do, we have. The USBRS and Ohio (ODOT, Miami Conservancy District…there are vast numbers of others) and countless networks elsewhere and worldwide (the clever node-routing for cyclists in BeNeLux countries…) which inspire each other. OSM is a real catalyst for this, especially as OCM and CyclOSM render *cn tagged routes.

Many of us put forth the effort to grow, plant more seeds, receive more and wider acceptance and harmonization into other networks at appropriately other hierarchy levels. This has become messy with *cn (including in the USA), but it is explainable to some extent and while it can be said to be a runny watercolor in progress, the painting can be made out for what it is: OSM has networks of bicycle routes, including somewhat-sensible, somewhat-explainable ones in the USA. They are quirky and have their quite-particular histories that could benefit with some explanation. The two wikis I keep quoting (and updating) do this to some extent. Divergences, further contributions by others are welcome there. (Though here and now, we seem to be discussing just fine). And nice to hear from you, Richard; my ears are open.

I disagree with Minh’s automatically-assumed “for this to work…” part because when a route is asserted (as a *cn), part of what is being “vetted” (initially) is that the route is suitable to be a route (at whatever level of the hierarchy). If you wish to inspect infrastructure tags (as we together have written into our wiki’s What to tag section), you certainly can, and you’ll find them to always (if not nearly always) be cycleway, bike lanes, bicycle=yes or designated, etc. Sure, more specificity as to lanes and direction and if it is bidi mixed ped/bike, how is it segregated? yeah. But for good routes or a decent, “seeable” route network to exist, it isn’t crucial that good lanes and surface tags even exist, let alone be make or break. (Though, I like and continue to train my eye to appreciate how, say cycleOSM, cycle.travel and waymarkedtrails.org render such routes). It is safe to assume that if a real route exists (let’s say it’s tagged local lcn) it’s gonna be at least bike lanes or bicycle=yes at rock-bottom, if not cycleway=lane, highway=cycleway or better. Safe to assume, yes, but certainly add-able-onto-able. I love the ways that OSM’s data grow like this.

There still remains the fact that is crucial for OSM to tag well BOTH bicycle infrastructure tagging (and sometimes that is enough, as there isn’t any sense of a route or a network on these segments of “OK or good for bikes”) AND sane (and true) route=bicycle relations, especially when tagged network=*cn. For a long time, maybe even forever, there has been an earnest attempt by many (all?) to sanely apply the three levels of n, r and l in a “sensible for around here” methodology. Not perfectly, not even sanely in some places, but with an earnest, explainable-where-it-is-today methodology. It isn’t terrible. It isn’t anachronistic (entirely). It is understandable. It does both emerge and improve. And with it (them, the networks of networks) truly, the entire ecosystem grows towards something sane, widely understandable, correct to a large degree, improving and obviously vibrant, because, this is OSM. And that’s how we roll around here.

Nothing about the way that we do or might “render shields” is really hindered (terribly) by what we do or how we do it. We both (Minh and I) have contributed a fair bit to at least some of the stack that makes up a fairly sturdy tool/data chain, and while it might have a few loose teeth or a shy smile, it can all be remedied.

We’re doing OK, even fine, especially the “keep talking” part.

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Henning, I think I sense what you mean by “dense network” and thank you for explaining that part of some difficulties some people are having is that the (North) American *cn networks are “not as dense” as you are used to, especially at the ncn and rcn levels. Though, I assure you that the USBRS “being” and “fitting into” a national-level structure, even though it is maybe 40% complete, is essentially correct in the mindset of this US citizen. There might be around a third of a billion people (here, who have something to say about it) who would nod their heads and agree as/when/if they take the time to digest a lesson about it and fully understand it.

This doesn’t mean they are wrong. This might (probably does) mean that people from differing parts of the world might need to wrap their heads around how differing parts of the world (to wit, the Americas vs. Europe vs. Australia vs. Africa vs. Asia…) express *cn. It’s a fragile bubble sometimes, yet many of us continue to imagine it into existence as a thing that holds together. We do this with rail networks, borders, forests. Not perfectly, not 100% everywhere, but where we do, we strive for precision. What we get (have) is fuzzy at times, but it isn’t (wholly) wrong.

Our wikis say that “Michigan” (as a US state) fits into the level of “regional” and that “within a city” fit into the level of “local.” Gee, this is what we largely do in our data around here. So, we’re not so terribly different. If I (still?) don’t understand your confusion or misunderstandings, Henning, I’d love to hear about why not. Yes, I think I get the “density” difference in our “spanning of routes across a network.” But for those of us in the USA, we have a sense that a good chunk of the North American continental area (we say “the lower 48 states”) is the scope of “national.” I realize that is different in Europe. While they are not the same, the concept of “Europe as a whole” and “the USA comprising a fairly vast area” do have some overlap and may explain some of the “upset” in your understanding of how the levels of hierarchy are applied in the USA. And Henning, especially with the USBR 85 collaboration we recently enjoyed, I find you a wonderful “ambassador” of blending many topics and being so open and sharing of your support, understanding and perspectives!

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Forgotton to mention above, those network=*cn was defined in times, were OSM-data was surveyed on the ground and it was rather seldom, a route was added completely in “one batch” like it is nowadays and usually just added on the way, not as a relation.

So it was important to highlight, that the 10 miles of cycling route, I just added are actually part of a much longer route, which is supposed to be defined in reality, but so far nobody surveyed that data for OSM. As well there was no other easy possibility to have a quick guess about the length.
Nowadays the typical case is, we are creating a cycling route relation kind of as a batch, as usually the creators providing such kind of information to OSM, as OSM is kind of the standard source for cyclist. If you want to attract cyclist to your area, you kind of want to have your route in OSM.

Exactly. The only difference I see at the moment, that national in Europe is more like state-wide here in the US. A route from South of Europe to North of Europe would have a similar “importance” for me as a route across the US. On the other side, the network is not dense enough to separate state-wide and national routes. Like in Europe you would have plenty of options of cycle routes if you want to cycle from Amsterdam to Copenhagen, so you might want to rate them. But cycling from Atlanta to Chicago you will have at most one route.

Btw.: Based on the “importance” it’s hard to consider Relation: ‪International Selkirk Loop‬ (‪6704909‬) | OpenStreetMap as more important than any USBR-route, just because it’s crossing the boarder :wink:

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Yes, there is a sense of routes that are shorter or more-local (or more-regional but seemingly somewhat national) getting “gobbled up” (superseded, absorbed, there are many ways to say it) into longer, more substantial routes at a higher level in the hierarchy. In the USA, sometimes these do get absorbed, sometimes these stand alone and are “double-routed” (concurrent with) along the same infrastructure of a “lesser” route. In the USA, this happens with automobile / highway routes a LOT, but it happens with bicycle routes, too. Or, sometimes, a “lesser” route is deprecated in favor of the “superior” (higher in the hierarchy) route. That’s what my original post is about.

What Richard does with cycle.travel is express “wonderful” routes to ride on. What OSM does with capturing its data is express “here’s what jurisdictions (usually) say are routes, usually (or should be) signed.” Those are (slightly) different from each other, so there will be some friction, Richard expresses.

The International Selkirk Loop, which I have extensively tagged (and got permission from its owner to use their logo in our wiki) isn’t claimed to be “more important” than any other (regional, national…) route. It is simply called “international” because it crosses national borders (for cyclists). Doesn’t make it better, simply makes it different when we use jurisdiction in the hierarchy.

See, it can be explained. But sometimes, people make assumptions (that maybe shouldn’t be made in a particular context). On the whole, it works and is explainable.

When a state (via its DOT) applies to AASHTO for a bicycle route to become a numbered part of our national network (the USBRS) it is doing so not because that state has perfect knowledge of what your perfect route to ride is. They say “here is a route that we find suitable for longer-distance cyclists.” Richard understands this. You (Henning) understand this. Each USBR is another piece on the checkerboard of the growing network, still spotty at ~40% completion, and only a shared vision by the dozens of states who have already added dozens of routes to the growing network. These things take decades and are not uniform like hamburgers from a chain or the uniformity of Autobahn or Interstate highways. Maybe someday the USA will have such a system, maybe the USBRS will be like the US Highway System (with numbers and black-and-white shields different from Interstate routes and shields) of the 20th century: a good initial national numbered network for cyclists. (Indeed, a lot of what AASHTO does is to administer the growth of these three numbered highway networks in the USA: Interstates, the US Highway System and the USBRS).

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Totally understand :wink: , just in Europe it’s usually not understood like this. For example take a look at the German-French boarder: Waymarked Trails - Cycling. Even though routes crossing the boarder, they are not considered “being of international importance”.

That’s my above mentioned concern. In North America “international” is some thing different than in Europe. Maybe it’s more obvious to understand the *cn as rating from 1…4 rather than correlating the North American routes based on the first letter of the *cn. Which would help to have somehow a similar route-rating in North America and Europe. Or understand “international” more like continental.

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Ah, thank you. We do indeed get closer in our understandings. This is helpful!

I assuredly do not (as an American) consider i=1 n=2, r=3, l=4 (of *cn) as a “rating.” I take their meaning of international, national, regional and local more-or-less literally, as a jurisdiction which asserts some level of authority over the level in the hierarchy of the network specified. This seems a fundamental difference how Americans and Europeans differ with *cn.

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I’m not arguing against mapping bike routes. What I am arguing against is imparting too much meaning from these routes. A map may choose to highlight a bike route end to end in the same color, just as it may highlight a state route end to end in the same color, even if the state route happens to traverse a freeway in some places and a gravel road in others. Routers can use route relations to avoid sending users on unnecessary detours, but none of this functionality should require us to map the entirety of a given route network at a single level of importance.

I think the need to distinguish functional classification from route networks will become clearer over time as older bike routes get bypassed by newer and better ones. This is what happened in Ohio about 15 years ago, when ODOT’s original lettered state routes fell into oblivion and effectively got bypassed by the rail trails, which at the time were still numbered only by (friends of) local trail managers. I’ve still mapped the lettered routes, to the extent that I can find any signs or documentation whatsoever, but I don’t think anyone should equate them to the numbered routes for practical purposes.

Rock-bottom would aptly describe some segments of network=lcn, rcn, or ncn that I’ve mapped. Here in San José, the only numbered bike route that exists on the ground, Route 11, begins along a stretch of Monterey Highway that’s notorious for pedestrian and cyclist fatalities. The shoulder is all that passes for cycling infrastructure, if you don’t mind cars passing by at 55 miles an hour or more. A less confident cyclist would be well advised to take a quieter parallel street.

A sign marks the beginning of San José Bike Route 11 along a four-lane expressway with a median barrier. A sign just after it (blurred out) indicates a speed limit of 55 miles per hour.
A sign marks the beginning of San José Bike Route 11 along a four-lane expressway with a median barrier. A sign just after it (blurred out) indicates a speed limit of 55 miles per hour.1920×1080 107 KB

If you look at the roads that carry many of California’s numbered U.S. and local bike routes, you quickly get the sense that these routes are designed by and for committed road cyclists, not for the faint of heart. It’s a far cry from Ohio’s effort to maximize the use of stress-free rail trails for its U.S. and state routes, coordinated by the same office that manages the state’s Safe Routes to School program. This is no criticism of either state, but it goes to show that what appears to be a single network on paper is actually as diverse as the states’ highway networks.