A new street appeared in Upper Hutt (NZ) two weeks ago, and I found it to be a bike trail, very rough and gnarly, dangerous to walk, and probably an expert trail. It was in a forest that had been felled, then replanted, and there were lots of bike trails in that area.
Firstly, should obscure bike trails be accepted into Citystrides? If so, there are probably up to 50 bike trails in the general area, and hundreds in the Wellington region, many not officially named. No cars could ever drive on them.
Secondly, if Citystrides does not want bike trails, whether they are obscure, or well used, how do we categorise them in OSM so that Citystrides does not copy them across.
Thanks for your help
Grant Nicholls
All the street data comes from OpenStreetMap.
If something is incorrect in CityStrides, it should be edited in https://www.openstreetmap.org … keeping in mind that OSM does not exist for CityStrides, it exists for the world at large but CityStrides also benefits (in other words, we shouldn’t be tagging things in OSM specifically/exclusively for CityStrides reasons e.g. tagging things as private because we don’t want to go there)
You can see the tags that I’m querying on in CityStrides Street Query - Google Sheets
I don’t know enough to determine if Tag:highway=cycleway - OpenStreetMap Wiki is an applicable tag in this case.
There’s some helpful info in Wiki - CityStrides Community
There are also a lot of helpful people who can help you from this post - let’s see if someone can chime in given the info you’ve already provided.
Thanks James,
Part of my query was about what the CS community wants on CS. If the person who put the ‘Half Wolf’ street onto OSM decides to put all the bike trails in the Wellington region on CS, it could be swamped by bike trails. And many of them could be many kilometers from the nearest road, which is tough to get to as a walker. In general, do other participants want to see bike trails proliferate on CS?
In the years I have been logging my walks, and observing others, nearly 100% of them have been genuine streets and roads, navigable by cars, and that has kept me pushing on.
I take your point that OSM exists for uses far beyond CS.
I will read through your notes on the query you run to copy data from OSM.
Thanks
Reading up a bit I find on the page Jim suggested, Tag:highway=cycleway - OpenStreetMap Wiki
“Ways that are not marked as cycleway by traffic signs (and are therefore open to non-bicycle traffic (e.g., moped or horse) should typically be tagged as highway=path instead of highway=cycleway,”
Not even mentioning highway=track.
Then this page: Bicycle - OpenStreetMap Wiki
" Off-road and outdoor
Outside of cities and dense populated areas most cycling routes are mapped using highway=track when the way is also used by large motorized vehicles (agricultural, forestry, emergency vehicles…) or highway=path when not intended for motorized vehicles (rather pedestrians, horses…).
So this would imply your Half Wolf should maybe be tagged as Path, not Track. And then it won’t be imported to CS
Thanks for looking into that!
Yeah, Grant, the intention is that - outside of odd things we can’t sanely/systematically tag in OSM - it’s just streets in CityStrides. I wouldn’t expect these bike trails to exist in CityStrides & the idea of re-tagging them all from highway=track to highway=path seems logical to me.
Thanks James and Hans.
I am not going to change the ones that have already been done, but if any new ones come up, I now know what to do.
It was good to hear your general philosophy, James, about Citystrides being streets. I have walked a number of long forestry roads, they are certainly vehicle roads/streets, and I do enjoy them. But cycle trails can be very difficult, especially if there is a cyclist just around the corner and they can’t be seen or hard. And they generally travel fast.