I really hope there was a missing smiley!
Nope.
Netherlands.
The same and by law you must drive/ride right, color red asphalt does not mean anything.
You can even park on that red with dashed line.
https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/NL:Key:cycleway
But then: cycleway:lane
Important is the bicycle icon after each junction.
You may drive over the dashed line, but when you may not park or unnecessary stand still (also for bicycle).
Continuous line, you can not cross it.
Where do we use a continuous line.
at overtake, overtaking line
and at turn:lanes see example
lanes=4
turn:lanes=none|through|through|slight_right
transit:lanes=continue|continue|continue|leave
through effect.
Going over a line is a turn lane effect. going straight is through.
turn:lanes=through
We already use it, no need for a change.
Edit:
But not yet with cycleway=lane is suppose.
or
http://overpass-turbo.eu/s/wxi
https://www.openstreetmap.org/way/429041570#map=19/50.79163/6.09863
Can I ask you why you think it is a good thing that people map things they do not understand ?
The info about Belgium with soft/shared lanes not being dashed at all seems to speak strongly against my proposal.
I’ll take a break from this thread and research on how softly segregated cycleways look (and whether they exist) in different countries and when I come back, either make another proposal or provide another argumentation for my initial one.
If you are from a country not represented here in the topic yet and know about the cycleway situation, feel free to post here and describe it. It will help me with the research.
Also, be nice to each other. Don’t forget that we are pulling together here to find the most reasonable tagging. It’s not about wgo is right or who is wrong.
I didn’t say it is “a good thing” just that it is normal and not allowing it would greatly reduce the number of (useful) objects added to OSM. It would naturally be nice if it was possible for everybody to have encyclopedic knowledge on what they map, but most don’t, particularly those that think they have.
Trivial example essentially nearly everybody from Germany will get the tagging for https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/w/images/8/86/Verbot_f%C3%BCr_Motorwagen_und_Motorr%C3%A4der.png in CH wrong. Or see the NL example just given above.
Why are they mapping details in foreign countries that they don’t understand? That sound like a big argument against armchair mapping.
Not sure were armchair mapping enters the picture here (well I suppose mapillary could be a source of such edits), but in any case if you were walking/cycling/whatever and saw such a sign you are saying that you wouldn’t try to reflect it in tagging (assuming nothing was already tagged there)?
Maybe a little off topic: But as a reaction to the above.
The last years, I have looked into how to map tag traffic_signs, correctly for the Netherlands. In this process: Now we started to map/tag traffic_sign (the base) on the cycleway way, so that we know, what kind of cycleway it is, and then set the appropriate transportation mode tags, like moped mofa. Even we can control it, now, we have also the use_sidepath for moped, mofa, bicycle and foot.
I tried to make a country specific preset.
Mostly traffic_signs have undersigns, only_for/extension/exclusions, that made it very hard to make a preset.
The combination tags is needed and I do not have to figure out the combination tag again, there so many, also set the base, traffic_sign=NL on it to verified the derivative tags. ( We all have this problem, abroad it is even bigger)
I made a conclusion, it is not possible, because the preset syntax is not that much developed, that I can correctly set the tags for a traffic_sign.
Made a question ticket in JOSM
Bottom line is, I can not make the right combinations. If I need to think again, is this right, what other do I have to fill in, then faillure margin is bigger. A good preset is quality tagging. For a survived mapper or a armchair mapper. Problem is the same.
For me this is a** BIG **issue. The database is used for routing, a important use.
If I would map in other country, I like to have a specific country, preset. I do not know there law. So it could be a little different.
The presets which now are in JOSM is not correct for my country, my conclusion, I can not use a other country preset. (discussed it with the maker)
For example: like the above mentioned sign png(CH) a front view car on a sign is in country law, double tracked (or more then two wheels). Strange is the use of motor_vehicle and then excluded tranportion modes with =yes, (hard to understand for less experienced, is often forgotten) double_tracked_motor_vehicle would be correct ( double tracked, is even a categorie (like vehicle)on the [access page](https://wiki.op enstreetmap.org/wiki/Key:access#Transport_mode_restrictions)
Because of (wrong?)motor_vehicle use, moped and mofa are often not tagged correctly, law motor vehicle concepts versus OSM motor_ vehicle concepts.
A car seen from the side 
is in many countries a car, motorcar in OSM automobiles/cars (access page) , but OSM wiki give a wider explanation. Wikipedia wiki only cars.
Just a example why motorcar is very difficult to use, and should be better worked out. Only…
Also agricultural=* or *=agricultural (agricultural=agricultural) and law traffic_sign. motor vehicles less then 25 km, should have there own tag. Then a sign could be directly translated, giving less error.
I also ended up to make my own mapcss (experimental), to control myself and see, what I am doing. (A known image on spot, says more then a tag description)
Now I see strange tagging combination, that does not fit the traffic_sign wiki.
(As written experimental, you see some not proven tags, because of law and traffic-sign)
Netherlands mostly all roads are mapped, not correctly on it’s place (new data layer, then the old Bing aerial) Tags goes deeper and derivative not good to look over with simply editors.
For me is continuous line tagging, important, the base tagging like traffic_sign on the way, all other tags are derivative tags, the tags can be controlled. cycleway:lane=soft/hard, does not say, what the base is. Country specific presets make the difference. For both survey mappers and armchair mappers.
IMHO you are approaching this the wrong way, the “one click” solution to this is to have two different presets.
Note while not documented here http://vespucci.io/tutorials/presets/ I have an attribute internally reserved for “region”, to provide country specific presets. Nothing uses them right now as the alternative approach to simply provide separate presets seems to work just as well, see for example: https://simonpoole.github.io/US-MUTCD-preset/
But what do you suggest non-local mappers do when they see the red paint on the road ?
Map it as simply as road_with_red_paint=yes ? Or guess what the meaning is ? Maybe it’s means parking=no, or sidewalk=yes or cycleway=shared_lane or … ?
Without knowing the traffic law, you should ask the local community, read the wiki, etc. But in the end you will only be able to map it properly only if you know that piece of the traffic law that defines the meaning of the red painted area.
I reference as proposed tagging the one favorited in my earlier post.
So for Switzerland it would be a yellow dashed line, continuous line is also possible but the meaning is exactly the same, according to the German Wikipedia article.
This tagging would be not exactly necessary but is possible and do not break anything.
For Austria it would be a continuous line, white, and can be dashed, which changes the law for this ‘lane’. It’s then a completely different ‘lane’ by law with different rules. So the proposed tagging would be very useful.
In Germany, just for completelyness: the dashed or continuous line does NOT imply that this is a bike ‘lane’ it is either shown by a pictogram on the street or by a sign.
Both types of stripes (dashed and continuous lines) are nearly identical for the drivers, you must not use them as car, unless it is necessary. In both cases bikes don’t be jeopardised by the car, which need to drive there.
For bikes: you’re pretty much forced to drive on this lanes in both cases, since there’s a law, that you need to drive on the right side of the road, which is usually this stripe. On continuous lines you must use them as bike by a different law as well, which in practicality both means the same for the bicyclist.
BUT, the continuous line lanes have one advantage: they have a minimum width, also the markings are nearly twice as wide and a optically larger separation from the car lane. Both makes driving on those continuous line lanes much more pleasant and safer in MHO. So tagging would be very useful for routers, which can give streets with this type of lane a bigger bonus.
Which is however wrong, not completely but the legal situation for use by cars is different.
As a comparatively new mapper the dashed/continuous solution seems better to me.
In my town the usage of tags like bicycle=no/yes/designated is often wrong, as far as I can see. So, I prefer a solution that is easy to validate. Of course, it might happen that micomapping becomes a problem. Here you need a clear statement that this should not be (in the wiki for example) and an informed mapper. The informed mapper you also need for a mapping by meaning.
Specials like colors and signs could be done by further (sub-)tags. In this case it would be the task of the renderer/router to know the local legislation and to implement it correctly.
Concerning the Belgian cycle paths: As it seems to be a more or less special situation, it might be tagged as continuous line. Okay, this might be not 100 % consistent to my previous “map what you see” statement. Feel free to criticize me 
By analogy:
If there’s a dashed line or a solid line in the middle of the road, we don’t map the road marking. We map what it represents - i.e. with the overtaking=no tag. This means that the data can be parsed worldwide despite slightly variant markings - in the UK, for example, a double white line means “no overtaking”, but in some other countries it’s yellow, or a single line, or both.
We should do the same in this instance. Rather than tagging “dashed line”, tag what it means, in a format that’s consistent the world over. The lingua franca of OSM tagging is British English, so this might be something like cycleway:lane=advisory (or ‘mandatory’). “soft_lane” is awfully Denglisch.
But in fact we don’t need to do that. We already have tags that can be used for this purpose.
- If cars are prohibited in the cycle lane: cycleway:motor_vehicle=no
- If cars are allowed in the cycle lane: cycleway:motor_vehicle=yes
And following the well-adopted bicycle=use_sidepath tag (which is also Denglisch, but that ship has sailed):
- If bikes must use the cycle lane and aren’t allowed in the main carriageway: bicycle=use_cycleway
I’d be happy to add support for any of these to cycle.travel’s routing weightings.
Okay, I am back.** I am now a specialist on cycleway legislation. Ask me anything :P**
I also dipped into how the cycleways are used in practice a bit, for a few countries. I have a good overall picture now, and my proposal is:
cycleway:lane = exclusive / shared / pictograms
First things first, let me share my knowledge with you: Here is my research on legislations of cycleways in different countries. It is mostly based on this wikipedia article, however re-checked in the actual law for most countries as this article gets a few things wrong and does not contain how these actually look like.
I cannot claim 100% correctness, as the main goal for this research was to find the similarities between the countries and determine categories this way.
Now, as a result, I have to say, that bikeways on the road can actually be sorted not into **three **categories, but four. I will cite from the linked pdf:
Dang! So this is going to be even more complicated? No, don’t worry, I’ll explain now:
No country safe for Belgium/Netherlands has both softly exclusive cycleways (B1) and suggestive cycleways (B2), so they can be merged into simply B - anything dashed. This means that legislations on what dashed means differ slightly between the different countries:
-
in some countries, stopping with a car (sometimes even parking) is allowed, in others not
-
in some countries, the legislation talks about that cars may not “hinder” cyclists, in others, the legislation talks about that cars may only not “endanger” cyclists
-
in some countries, usage is obligatory for cyclists, in others not
But the important thing they have got all in common is this one thing: They are used whenever there is not enough space on the road for both dedicated cycleways (continuous lane or track) and full lanes for cars. And this is what matters most, because it means, that essentially, cyclists and cars more or less have to share the road-space. Cars need to cross into the cycle lane to evade oncoming traffic and cyclists may need to veer out of the cycle lane because of stopping cars on the lane or to keep their distance to i.e. the dreaded doors of parking cars.
So, abstracting away from the actual, sometimes unclear and changing legislation of which most road-users are ignorant anyway leaves us again with just three categories:
A: exclusive: cyclists have an own lane for themselves
B: shared: cyclists and cars share the space with one another
C: pictograms: it’s just a normal road with bicycle pictograms painted on it
But what about Belgium and Netherlands?
As you can see in the linked PDF, Belgium is somewhat of an exception: There all cycle lanes are dashed, and the suggestive cycle lanes when there is not enough space on the road are not dashed. Netherlands seems to be also a bit of an outlier because there are both “proper” dashed cycleways and suggestive cycleways.
So, I asked around in the community what is the current mapping practice on this. After all, we are not on a greenfield here.
Turns out, that both in Belgium and Netherlands consistently, the consensus has always been to map these “suggestive cycleways” as cycleway=shared_lane, even though that tagging is documented as “bicycle pictograms on the road, only really used in America” on the main wiki page in English. However, it is also documented in the Dutch OSM wiki to use cycleway=shared_lane for these Fietssuggestiestroken.
This explains why some German mappers express the opinion why Schutzstreifen should be mapped as shared_lane, which has a similar legal standing as the Dutch Fietssuggestiestroken and apparently also map this way.
Because the mentioned tag is now used for two different things, its definition is unfortunately not precise anymore - at least for those countries which both have suggestive cycleways and simple bicycle pictograms on the road (i.e. Czech Republic, France, increasingly other countries, such as Germany).
So, the only proper extension compatible with the current mapping practice I see is therefore this:
-
exclusive: cycleway=lane + cycleway:lane=exclusive
-
shared: cycleway=lane OR cycleway=shared_lane as per established mapping practice in that country + cycleway:lane=shared
-
pictograms: cycleway=shared_lane + cycleway:lane=pictograms
Using these subtags, as normal with subtags, is of course optional and for some countries, it would probably make no sense to use these. I.e. for any country where not both pictograms and suggestive lanes exist and at the same time the shared_lane value used on these then (USA, Canada, Belgium, probably Switzerland, that is).
Also, using these subtags, Dutch users can make a distinction, if they want to do that, between fietsstroken met onderbroken streep and Fietssuggestiestroken (using the same subtag but a different cycleway=* tag.
The reason why I changed my opinion on not using the direct appearances continuous, dashed and pictograms but abstracted one level away from that is mainly because of Belgium. I do not have a strong opinion on it though, I would be about just as fine with my original proposal though. Also, for Belgium, as mentioned, the subtag is pretty unnecessary anyway.
I may create a vote to decide on it later when all has been said what is to say about that and the discussion did not favour one option clearly.
Where it is described in this way? I see it neither on https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Key:cycleway or https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Bicycle or https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Proposed_features/shared_lane and I want to fix it as I either misunderstood something or it is not true.
Thanks for looking into this in so much detail.
Unfortunately this isn’t consistently the case in the UK.
To create a mandatory (solid line) cycle lane in which cars are banned, the highway authority (usually a county or unitary council) has to issue a Traffic Regulation Order, as is always the case when restrictions are being placed on a Public Right of Way to which traffic has an existing legal right. This is expensive and time-consuming.
To create an advisory (dashed line) cycle lane, the highway authority just needs to send a man out with a pot of paint.
Consequently many authorities create advisory lanes simply to save money and time. It doesn’t mean that there isn’t enough space on the road - there usually is. It just means the council wants to save money.
Mateusz Hmm, I might have been mistaken. Well, the better. Anyway, i.e. https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Proposed_features/shared_lane makes a clear distinction to “soft lane” (=suggestive lane) and talks about pictograms only.
Richard:Well, I wrote they are usually narrower. Also, saving money is not the only effect that placing an advisory cycle lane instead of a mandatory cycle lane has in the UK, as you surely know (parking cars).
You haven’t dealt with all the possible complexities. What about a cycle lane over cobblestones? 