Rendering of highway=cycleway and cycleway=lane or track etc.

Seems this is not way the OSM will go as the cycleway=track has been made obsolete http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/index.php/Key:cycleway.

OSM has rightly two ways to identify cycleways:
One as an independent cycleway “highway=cycleway” and one where the cycleway is part of a road “cycleway=track” or “cycleway=opposite_track”. Currently there starts to develop the “habit” to use the key “highway=cycleway” for cycleways which are physically separated from the main road but not independent cycleways. As far as I read the various Fora, the main reason is that the “cycleway=” keys are not rendered. Even cycle maps suffer from this problem: good and safe cycleways are not rendered.

At this moment this is the only problem, but with navigation programs quickly developing, there may be more serious ones in the future, e.g. navigation for cyclist becomes incomplete and safe cycleways cannot be found.

As map makers are “enticed” in using highway=cycleway rather then using the proper cycleway key, I think it is at this time worthwhile to consider the option to render the key cycleway properly, or (what I think is a bad option), discourage the use of the key “cycleway” and accept future problems with navigation software.

If the first option is selected by the OSM community, it will be necessary to develop a road indicator for the various roads with cycleways. Options can be that the middle of the road holds the blue dotted line (as it is used for independent cycleways as well) or the side of the road is dotted blue. DonÂ’t know if that is technically viable, but can be used as the starting point for thinking.

I hope this is seen as a constructive start of the discussion, .