Talk:New South Wales routes/Cycle

Getting organised to complete the coverage

The Sydney cycle map is greatly improved over how it was 10 months ago. Arguably it is one of the better cycle maps in existence in terms of accuracy and coverage, but there are still big gaps.

Can you help? Local knowledge is great. NearMap aerial photos cover all of the metropolitan area, and so for places that paint a bike on the road for cycle routes you can find them from NearMap.

Areas that need work:

• Anywhere north of the Parramatta River. With some exceptions (e.g. Kellyville area, Artarmon & Chatswood) coverage is not so good
• West of Strathfield and Canterbury. There have been some great regional routes added (e.g. rail trails) but local route coverage could do with some work

--Ebenezer 03:13, 30 June 2010 (UTC)

Relations instead of tags on ways

The tags like lcn_ref=* are not really how routes are tagged nowadays. It's much better to use relations for the routes. --Eimai 19:28, 21 March 2009 (UTC)

For routes that have a start and end (rather than just a series of related ways) I'm slowly converting existing routes to use relations. --Ebenezer 19:52, 22 March 2009 (UTC)

I have added details for how to tag a relation to the main page. Note that most local cycle routes in Sydney are not going to be relations, as they are more "this might be a good road to cycle on, and we have helpfully erected a sign here and printed it on our council's map" rather than "this is the route that gets you from A to B". --Ebenezer 04:19, 24 March 2009 (UTC)

what is a sydney cycle route?

Just how do you identify a cycle route in Sydney?

To the best of my knowledge, only really one council - Marrickville - has numbered routes and links. The RTA and other councils just mark random bits of road marked as having cycle facilities.

The best thing OSM can do for Sydney cyclists, is to ensure all the shortcuts, cycle links, cycleways etc are mapped, and then intelligently route across them.

If we have no official source of routes, every cyclist has their own idea of the best way between two places. Just check out bikely if you need evidence of this. --inas 23:12, 23 March 2009 (UTC)

Generally if it has signage it is a cycle route. i.e. Map what is on the ground. Signs are often blue and white, or a white bicycle symbol painted on the road. Few councils have numbered routes like Marrickville, but most councils have routes. Some councils even publish maps of their routes, although what is on their maps doesn't always match what is on the ground. --Ebenezer 04:17, 24 March 2009 (UTC)

Clearly not true IMO. These are often just directional signage and don't signify any form of route - often there is just one sign not followed up by any futher indications. We need to be careful, as the Sydney cycle map is now at risk of becoming a mesh of poor cycle routes. As for bicycle stencils, often there is no rhyme or reason where they are printed, rarely actually forming a "route" of any description. --inas 00:28, 7 April 2011 (BST)

B2B cycle route

I think the B2B indication on the relation is supposed to be Bay to Bay Walk. If so, it should be indicated as such, as we don't use abbreviations do we? My understanding of the Bay to Bay walk is that it is Homebush Bay to Botany Bay, and follows much of the Cooks River Cycleway - but doesn't continue to Kurnell. Most of the Bay to Bay signage has now gone, and following it as a complete route would be pretty much hopeless. Cooks River Cycleway is now far the best known name for this route. --inas 00:33, 7 April 2011 (BST)

Sans Souci to Kyeemagh

Again - inclined to tag this City Cycle Route, rather than Sans Souci to Kyeemagh - unless someone can reference a single sign that uses this terminology? --inas 04:43, 16 May 2011 (BST)

I've now done this. --inas 03:42, 23 October 2012 (BST)

Move to NSW Cycle Routes

Given that Illawarra, some Hunter Councils, and NSW funding / RMS provide state based routes in contexts oughtn't this page be broadened and moved? Samuelrussell 03:40, 27 July 2012 (BST)

It may be better to create another page, rather than lose focus. Its possible to enumerate all the Sydney cycle routes on a single page, maybe not so with NSW. Are there any state based routes in existence in reality? Things like the coastal cycle route consist of a few sections in Newcastle and a few sections in Jervis Bay. --inas 07:45, 27 July 2012 (BST)

Illawarra has its Coastal marked as Coastal (visual inspection of site). Then there's RMS upgraded highway shoulders. Apart from that there's no state level cycleways, only regional meshes (councils of Maitland, Newcastle, Lake Macquarie mesh; for the rare example). The problem with a Sydney centric location is the state importance of Cooks, Botany or M7 (off road), all of which appear to be rcns. Wiki transclusion is one option, if it is turned on for this server, ie: transcluding the "Sydney" page into the NSW page. Samuelrussell 12:19, 27 July 2012 (BST)

Here is a demonstration of transclusion in action on NSW / Sydney hierarchies. It will display the Sydney page within the NSW page, and IIRC allow editing of the Sydney page from either NSW or Sydney (updating both): NSW Cycle Routes. Please let me know if this is "wrong" in principle, or undesirable and I'll remove the transclusion; but I think it allows Sydney specific work, and for the contribution of Sydney specific work to NSW work to be represented. I'm happy to shift NSW specific content to NSW if people approve of this ordering of pages. Samuelrussell 12:38, 27 July 2012 (BST)

Looks like a reasonable solution to me. --inas 02:06, 3 August 2012 (BST)

Nodal networks: CoS

1. Some councils are now fully implementing their responsibility to provide way-finding signage on their bicycle networks
2. These way-finding signs take the general form of [ Redfern > ]
3. The network operates with signage continuously until about 1200m short of destination. So on a map you get [ Redfern > ] 1200 m [ < Newtown | Bondi Junction > ] 1200 m [ < Redfern ]
4. The nature of these networks are unnamed / implied name routes (Newtown - Bondi Junction) with nodal points
5. Names are detected by implication from signage
6. Nodes may be detected by implication from signage, by navigating either side until a node is indicated from either side, and then plonking the node around a junction / key destination
7. Partial mapping examples for CoS where signage exists is available, consider ( http://www.opencyclemap.org/?zoom=14&lat=-33.9006&lon=151.22242&layers=B0000 )
8. All nodes mapped above were detected via point 6. The Moore Park node is the conspicuous example: the traffic island is the only stable bit of land between a way-finding sign pointing north and south to Moore Park

The edition was edited in boldly, and removed for discussion, so I propose that we readd this proposal after discussion. Samuelrussell (talk) 04:16, 29 September 2014 (UTC)

Can you actually describe what you are proposing? And please say why what you're proposing is so unique to Sydney that this shouldn't be debated and discussed in the general cycleways tagging? The 'nodal network' of which you speak, sounds largely like directional signage to suburbs. Which exists for every through road in the city. If you want to plot the directional signs, I guess you can. They are real and on the ground, and probably a reasonable idea. But I think you want to try and find some abstract thing. A directional sign to Redfern stops when you are in Redfern. Or it's a very poor sign. --inas (talk) 10:20, 29 September 2014 (UTC)

Directional signage stops hundreds of meters short of destinations, there are no "This is Redfern" signs. So while it's cogent (Redfern exists on the ground), it requires an element of interpretation.

This tagging schema already exists Cycle_routes#Tagging_cycle_node_networks

And is quite common [[1]] including textual refs rather than numeric refs as in the Dutch / Belgian example.

So the two issues are: is the actual network nodal, is the interpretation required to place a node too great? Samuelrussell (talk) 11:01, 29 September 2014 (UTC)

The directional signage to a suburb merely indicates that the cycle route is a good one to take you closer to that suburb. It doesn't even guarantee the route will continue to the suburb, let alone an identifiable spot within it. Take the Cooks River cycleway example, where you see suburban indicators all the way along, as you approach/enter the suburb, the signs adjust to the next suburb (although a little haphazardly). --inas (talk) 22:29, 29 September 2014 (UTC)

It depends on the standards implemented and the era of implementation. CoS signage actually leads to a destination, and most destinations are identifiable by the intersection of routes. Cooks River is an example which should not be covered by this proposal, "nodes" can't actually be identified. Samuelrussell (talk) 03:48, 30 September 2014 (UTC)

It's just the same as a road sign. The path leads to a suburb or place. The signpost indicates that. Where the suburb or place that the bike path indicates is so different to the actual suburb or place, there may be a need for what you're saying. But I really can't see the point of putting a "Mascot" cycle route node, when we already have a Mascot place node, and I don't think they are distinguishable. The cycle sign is pointing you to the suburb, the same as the road sign.

Sydney motorways, etc

I'm actually reasonably concerned with some of the roads what we're assigning the ncn tag to. I realise that motorways often have a shoulder that can be used for cycling. And I'm totally in favour of mapping that facility. But pretending that lapstone hill, or some such is a national cycle route because it has a 50cm shoulder is verging on dangerous. The RMS indicates these routes as high difficulty on-road environments. High speed. Low separation. They aren't like a Eurovelo, or some such. I think we need to remove the ncn routes from these. With the exception of the coastal cycleway portions, I don't really think Sydney has much of what could be termed a national cycle route. --inas (talk) 22:54, 7 May 2018 (UTC)