I’ve been surveying the National Byway and its loops in Yorkshire and I was just wondering if we are actually tagging it correctly.
The Wiki page (http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/National_Byway) states that the loop relations should be tagged as type=route, route=bicycle, network=National Byway, name=loop-name but tagging it this way doesn’t render it on the cycle map.
However the page on relations of type route (http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Relations/Routes#Cycle_Routes) says to “Specify the [cycle] network as a national route, a regional route, or a local route, as per the normal tagging of cycle routes” using network=ncn/rcn/lcn.
I interpret this to mean that ncn simply indicates any national cycle network and not necessarily just Sustrans’ National Cycle Network.
Therefore, as the Byway is a national network shouldn’t we be tagging it as:
type=route
route=bicycle
network=ncn
name=National Byway
ref=??
(Not sure what to put under ref=?? and the loops could be regional cycle networks rather than national)
As an experiment I tried changing the Easingwold loop to:
type = route
route = bicycle
network = ncn (I could have used rcn)
ref = National Byway (I used this as it’s the ref that renders and not the name)
name = Easingwold Loop
and you can see how this renders at http://www.openstreetmap.org/?lat=54.1558&lon=-1.1158&zoom=14&layers=00B0FTF but you will need to be quick as I notice that Richard has changed it back again!
I think this looks ok and uses the existing features of the cycle map rendering.
To make the Byway render properly the cycle map would need only a generic change to render the name and not just the reference, a change that is surely required to benefit all of the other routes that exist and don’t yet render (The Trans Pennine Trail, The White Rose Way etc). At the moment the cycle maps needs to be changed to specifically render the Byway but my proposal to render the name avoids this.
What do people think?
Edit: Would a region= tag be useful too? The Byway is very much split into regions.