Talk:Key:class:bicycle/opinion

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Voice your support or constructive objection

Add some personal comments on this key with one catch: You have actively worked on implementing autorouting or at least though about it and used programs that make use of OSM data for autorouting. No harm folks, but many people objecting subjective keys have no clue about how to implement nice autorouting, and should therefore simply shut up or provide an alternative solution before one can take their comments to be constructive. Please use this page and explain why you suport this key, or add short statements how you could do it differently. Please also explain your backround.

Supporters by Experience

Comments of Mapmakers

• I have actively worked on Autorouting for Cyclists and Mountainbikers since around 2 years and publish the Openmtbmap and VeloMap. In my opinion both maps have very good autorouting but there are many cases where our current objective and measurable tags simply do not suffice to haver excellent autorouting. The wiki page about quick and simple cyclway mapping DE:Bicycle/simple_mapping does not make it any better. It is too complicated for me as Joe Average and it does not help me to make me find the best way on a bicycle from A to B. It is perfect for making a nice looking map, showing me a very objective description from a cyclist perspective (see here: VeloMap Map Legend ) and to a point allows 90% correctly guessed autorouting after setting up a very complicated system of rules [1] and 2 ). However for truly excellent autorouting we miss subjective keys and the possiblity of users to easily show that a way is suitable or not. Extremecarver

• I publish the ReiseRadKarte. This map should have a good routing for touringbikes. For tracks off the streets I'm satisfied with the available TAGs (smoothness, surface). But on roads "mainly" tagged for motor vehicles it's quiet difficult to find a good/useful route. Sometimes a tertiary or secondary is used by allmost by no cars and on an other tertiary or secondary there will be a huge amount of traffic. But this you cannot read out of the existing TAG's. All at all I would like to have an additional TAG, which tells me, how much traffic is on the road. From the amount of traffic (maybe -3 til 3) you can come to a conclusion of the usability of the road for cycling on it.

The danger I see at your proposed TAG's is, that this TAG will be misused by people, who wants to be routed about there route, they took every day on their way to work. If you analyse the amount of traffic, more user can set these TAG's and there and the misuse-rate will be much lower.

Please consider that the amount of traffic is heavily dependent on date and time. If you take a secondary highway from an urban area into a city center it might happen that this highway is congested every Monday and working-day morning. But on Sunday or a public holiday it is likely to be quite empty and very fast to ride, especially with a racingbike but also with a touringbike. For the touringbike use-case the way from the city to the airport is usually a good example. So a useful autorouter, which evaluates such a tag, would need to take date&time in addition with local public holidays also into account. --7503146 08:54, 23 May 2010 (UTC)

If there are always ups and downs on the cycleway, it should be considered in smoothness-TAG.

aighes

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Comments of routing algorithm developers

You have experience in writing routing algorithms (tell which), and something to say.

• ...

Users of OSM products/maps with autorouting

You are a user of OSM based software or maps that provide autorouting, and something to say (please tell which)....

• I think such a tag is specifically useful in a situation when a previosely frequently used country road gets a new highway in parallel. The road is objectively the same but the traffic is reduced drastically and perfectly usable for cyclists (I'm using such kind of road in several circumstances). Moreover this tag can be helpful to mark highway=path as quite fit for bicycles. The fact that I personally prefer out of my knowledge different routes than the autorouting suggests makes me think that such a tag is useful and just helps people which is finally the sense of OSM. Tillea 15:10, 3 May 2010 (UTC)
• Since some months I'm tagging streets in my home area and try to tag them with all information I see when walking around (like traffic signs, surface/smoothness, if it's lit and so on) to get a full coverage and don't have to walk around the same areas again and again to add specific tags. Since some days I use the maps from velomap when cycling and in my opinion they are very good. I also want to use routing with my GPS. As Tillea sayd: You often have roads which are by objective means the same - same highway type, same surface etc. - but one is much more convenient for cyclists. When tagging streets nowadays I use the tag rtc_rate (as described in the german map features page) to tell cycling routing software which of the streets should be preferred over others. In my opinion this tag rtc_rate is much the same as class:bicycle (A=+2, B=+1, C=0, D=-1, E=-2, XX=-3). For me it doesn't matter which tag to use to guide a cycling routing software to "cycle-friendly" streets, be it rtc_rate or class:bicycle. But now I'm wondering what of the two alternatives to use...? --Blue-storm 18:54, 29 May 2010 (UTC)

Objectors by Experience

Comments of routing algorithm developers

You have experience in writing routing algorithms (tell which), and something to say.

Users of OSM products/maps with autorouting

You are a user of OSM based software or maps that provide autorouting, and something to say (please tell which)....