Hey there!
I have got a question and a suggestion of mapping roads with surface=paving_stones and their corresponding smoothness.
My goal is to allow cycling paving stones with a race bike, wherever the paving stones are of good quality. I found no real information about that specific mapping, as the wiki mostly relates to asphalt roads.
So here is my suggestion:
- Excellent - Seamless connecting, flat paving stones with no straight lines.
- Good - Mostly seamless and flat connecting paving stones or like 1/Excellent but with straight lines
- Intermediate - Loosy Paving stones or like 2/Good but with larger straight lines
- Bad - Usually cobblestone I’d say
The idea is:
Inline skaters will need very close paving stones and no straight lines. If it got straight lines, you will very likely crash. You can tolerate that for a few meters, but not for longer roads.
Race Bikes can deal with mostly good paving roads and can tolerate some loosy stone roads for a few meters.
I do understand that routers will not route race bikes through paving stones if there is an asphalt road nearby. But sometimes it just makes sense to use a paving_stones bicycle way, as it is more safe, and if the road is of good smoothness, there is no reason to avoid it. At least if you are not cycling as a professional with super high speed (like when bikepacking).
So is my understanding correct? If yes, I’d like to take some example pictures and would like to add them to the wiki. Since this is a very common attribute (i guess), I would like to ask first, before I edit anything on the wiki (if I am even allowed to, I dont know yet). I think it makes sense to add that information, so smoothness tagging of paving_stones can be taken with more care.
Thanks for all your feedback!