[mkgmap-dev] Utilizing route=bicycle relations in long-distance routing

Tue Oct 8 19:29:03 BST 2013

On Tue, Oct 08, 2013 at 06:54:57PM +0200, Henning Scholland wrote:
>if this route does not belong to an cycle network please don't use 
>network=*cn or *cn=yes, which are defined for bicycle routes which 
>belong to such a network.

I did not use any of network=*, *cn=* or ref=* and do not plan to.

>In general I think there are enough bicycle routes which you can use 
>for testing ;)

Maybe. This one I could test in real life, because I often ride to 
places that are close to this route.

Another problem related to cycle routing is the relationship between 
cycleways and the nearby roads. Sometimes cycleways run in parallel to a 
motor-vehicle-only road, but in bigger intersections they can get 
further apart. Around here, the cycleways are usually unnamed. Only in 
some rare cases there is a name for a cycleway/footway.

One problem with these unnamed cycleways that run in parallel to a named 
main road is that the name will be missing in navigator prompts.  It 
would be nicer to be prompted to turn to "Main Street" or "Main Street 
(cycleway)" instead of an unnamed way. But, it is arguably wrong to add 
the name tag to the cycleway, if it is not a lane of Main Street.

Also, I guess that for long-distance routing outside urban areas, it 
would be good if the routing engine followed a highway=trunk to get the 
"rough picture" and then added "micro-routing" for the nearby cycleway 
based on the relationship of these two ways. For the purpose of bicycle 
routing, the cycleway is "equivalent to" the motor vehicle road.

But, how to tag this in such a way that mkgmap and routing engines can 
easily make use of this? The closest relation types that I can find on 
the wiki are 'site' and 'street', both only in proposed status, and 
neither is for exactly this use case.

Best regards,

	Marko