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I'm trying to draw a separated two-way cycle track that is attached to a main road (separated by bollards, very clearly marked).

The wiki suggests two ways of doing this: Either I use cycleway=track on the road, or I draw a separate cycle path parallel to the road. I'd like to use the latter; it's much easier to understand when reading maps.

The wiki mentions:

It is of paramount importance, to properly connect separately drawn cycle tracks to general roads and to other paths. This is both to reflect ground truth and to aid routing algorithms, which cannot 'understand' or take a chance on this by themselves, even though the distance might be less than a metre, or even if lines cross but the ways do not have merged nodes.

This makes sense, but I'm not 100% sure what the exact way to do this is: should we be adding extra cycle tracks to connect with features, or should we extend features to hit the cycle tracks?

If I have the following situation, I have two ways of connecting the cycle track (top left) to the parking aisle (bottom right). I can either extend the parking aisle route further across the road (yellow diagonal) to connect with the track, or I can draw a tiny branch off the cycle track that meets at the junction. It seems like the former is the better option, but I'm not sure.

(Note: the satellite imagery here hasn't been updated to show the cycle track, but it's where the old cycle lane used to be)

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asked 25 Nov '19, 04:50

Manishearth's gravatar image

Manishearth
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accept rate: 0%


Personally I would usually extend the parking aisle to the cycle track if there were a suitable dropped curb etc. for the bikes to drive over. There has been a recent proposal for footway=link for the pedestrian version of your first suggestion, but this has not been approved yet.

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answered 25 Nov '19, 07:59

InsertUser's gravatar image

InsertUser
11.0k1369185
accept rate: 19%

Thanks! We should probably mention this in the wiki somehow if it's the most common way to do things.

(25 Nov '19, 08:03) Manishearth

I don't know whether it's truly the most common. I tend to think of it as the simplest way that isn't 'wrong', similar to extending the service road through a dual carriageway rather than stopping at the first lane and transitioning into primary_link.

(25 Nov '19, 08:20) InsertUser
2

AFAIK, In the country where I map, this would be changed to the way SK53 describes

(26 Nov '19, 04:12) escada

I disagree with InsertUser here, albeit in details rather than in principle.

I would connect the service road to the main road, BUT NOT to the cycleway. Instead I would create a short cycleway from the main cycleway to join the service road where it intersects the service road. These would be rather equivalent to the footway=link suggestion as InsertUser remarks. The reason for doing it this way are: you cant drive from the service road onto the cycleway; it doesn't require lots of additional access tags; and (co-incidentally) it happens to render more cleanly.

Equivalent constructions are quite common with footpaths in estates with many short service roads.

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answered 25 Nov '19, 16:58

SK53's gravatar image

SK53 ♦
28.1k48268433
accept rate: 22%

Won't it render the cycleway as having a lot of little "hairs" on maps?

(25 Nov '19, 17:18) Manishearth
2

@Manishearth: you shouldn't care about the rendering, but about the correctness of the data, for the reason SK53 gives: "you cannot dive from the service road onto the cycleway"

(26 Nov '19, 04:05) escada
2

@Manishearth: in practice the road will be rendered over the cycleway so that at most zoom levels it will be either totally obscured or barely visible. If the footway=link suggestion is adopted then renders could, in the future, choose not to render such ways.

(26 Nov '19, 10:58) SK53 ♦

If the bollards mentioned in the question were mapped on the side road then they wouldn't be passable by cars either. cycleway=link would be the nicest if that style ever gets approved.

(26 Nov '19, 21:26) InsertUser

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question asked: 25 Nov '19, 04:50

question was seen: 1,298 times

last updated: 26 Nov '19, 21:26

NOTICE: help.openstreetmap.org is no longer in use from 1st March 2024. Please use the OpenStreetMap Community Forum