Proposal talk:Mandatory

Usefulness of the parameter

I did not invent this parameter, but I was lucky to find it.

Worldwide, there is a large variation of regulations and facilities for cycling. There are different traditions, and there are scientific findings on safety and traffic climate that suggest innovative street designs.

In some countries, the traffic rules allow the local authorities various solutions for cycle traffic.

• The oldest normal way of bike use, cycling on the road, somtimes has to be emphasized by the mappers, such as highway=tertiary + bicycle=yes.
• If there are special ways for cycling, lane (on the carriageway) versus track (beneath the carriageway) is not the only variation.
• Tracks beneath the carriageway can be reserved for cycling or shared with pedestrians. If they are shared, they can be primarily dedicated for pedestrians, primarily for bicycles or equal. Their usage can be compulsory (cycling on the carriageway forbidden) or facultative (choice between carriageway and track).
• Also on the carriageway there is a possible variety of status:
  • Strict separation: Cars and bicycles have to keep on their reserved lanes.
  • Soft separation: A dotted line gives fearful cyclists the feeling not to cycle among motorcars and motorists have to do most of their way left of this line, but buses in counterflow turn out on the cycle lane, and cyclists may use all parts of the carriageway, too.
  • Shared lanes: Cyclists are led on bus lanes, or they are equal or even prioritar users of a lane of general motor traffic.

The well established access-tags are insufficient to distinguish two or more of these solutions sometimes existing in the same city. --Ulamm (talk) 00:10, 20 August 2014 (UTC)

Ok, I think I might have understood it wrong. So basically this tag makes no difference for routing?

I think mandatory=* is a bad name to describe this. It's basically a variation of segregated=*.

Note that I tried to contact the original author of this page before trying to archive it, and waited 2-3 weeks without answer.

--Jgpacker (talk) 01:28, 20 August 2014 (UTC)

mandatory=* describes a kind of segregation. It tells that in a carriageway the lanes for motor vehicles and bicycles legally are strictly segregated (in contrast to soft segregation and in contrast to shared lanes).

On the other hand, segregated=* tells that the space for pedestrians and bicycles beneath a carriageway (or a road crossing for foot & bike, or a way far off any road) is divided into a footway and a cycleway.

For bicycle routing mandatory=* is not relevant for the question if you may cycle on that road or not. But it is relevant for different types of cyclists. Many cyclists feel safer on a lane without any cars. Skilled cyclists know that at intersections they go safer if they come from a direction, where also cars come (as car drivers look there).--Ulamm (talk) 08:17, 20 August 2014 (UTC)

I do understand this information can still be useful. I still think mandatory=* is a bad name though (might cause future discussions and misuse of this tag).

Try to see if the tag bicycle=use_sidepath is what you are looking for. It looks similar.

--Jgpacker (talk) 11:50, 20 August 2014 (UTC)

"mandatory" tells that such a cycling lane is reserved for bikes, not that its use is obligatory for cyclists, though in German cycling lanes these features are combined. In contrast, in Germany both compulsory and facultative cycling tracks beneath the carriageway are mandatory, i.e. they mustn't be used by other kinds of traffic (In reality, both kinds are abused frequently, e.g. for parking dellivery vans.).

Furthermore it is more logical to decribe compulsoriness vs. facultivity of cycling tracks and cycling lanes by tags of them, rather than by tags of the car lanes.--Ulamm (talk) 17:23, 20 August 2014 (UTC)

+1 on Jgpacker. "mandatory" doesn't discribe a physical situation, but how a way has to be used. So "mandatory" is better suited as an access-value. --Hubert87 (talk) 13:01, 23 August 2014 (UTC)

"mandatory is already used at more than 7000 sites. Nevertheless the name is not optimal.

"reserved" would be clearer, as mandatory could also mean compulsory=obligatory which the described cycling fycilities in the U.K. are not.

On the other hand, reserved cycle lanes could be considered the British kind of strictly separated cycle lanes, shortened to "cycyleway=strict_lane", in order to avoid too many tags afforded to to describe one element of a street.--Ulamm (talk) 15:44, 4 November 2014 (UTC)