(Just as a datapoint, mapping as a separate adjacent cycleway, within the road envelope, is currently 24 times more popular by way length than adding a cycleway=track (or similar) tag to a non-cycleway highway. Figures taken from cycle.travel's rendering database, restricted to the UK, calculated using PostGIS.)

So how is this different from the two road carriageways, which are also both part of the highway, yet which are mapped as separate ways? I'm failing to understand the distinction you're drawing here and would like to.

(oneway:bicycle=no, I mean. Need more coffee at this time in the morning)

That's not how OSM has worked for 15+ years. OSM iterates towards more detail, not less. By removing the separate cycleway you are destroying detail.

We map the two carriageways (which have physical separation) as separate ways. There is no reason why a cycleway, which is also physically separated, should be different. A paint-only bike _lane_, yes, but this isn't a bike lane, it's a separate track with 1m+ of physical separation (kerb + grass verge). I remember having a conversation with Steve Coast outside a London pub in 2005 about whether OSM should map dual carriageways as two separate ways or single ones. He said "two"; I said "one"; he was right and I was wrong, and that's how OSM has worked ever since.

Anyone who downloads a GPX from any bike routing site will get a track that directs them along the main A555 carriageway. That's somewhere between "not helpful" and "actively dangerous".

Cartographic generalisation can remove detail (e.g. by "skeletonise" operations for dual carriageways) but it can't put back detail which has been omitted. There's no way to accurately reconstruct the geometry of the cycleway from an "integral part of the highway" approach.

It doesn't help that the previous mapping is just factually wrong - you have highway=trunk, oneway=yes, oneway:bicycle=yes. That means "this is a trunk road on which bikes are allowed to cycle in both directions" - in other words, cyclists are allowed on the main carriageway against the flow of traffic. It's a few years since I've been on the A555 (I used to have family in Bramhall) but my recollection is that would be a one-way trip to the funeral parlour...

Please don't do this. It deletes useful information (the geometry of the cycle way), makes it harder to add additional tagging (e.g. width and surface) without extensive namespacing which basically nothing consumes, and makes it less useful for routers and renderers.

Hi,

Mapping this as highway=service is a bit misleading unless you also add access tags to say that the general public is forbidden (which presumably they are).

Hi Gordon,

This looks interesting - are these cycle routes signposted somehow?

Richard

Hello - in this changeset, you seem to have dropped a vast amount of nodes with ele, time and hdop tags but nothing useful in them. Could you remove them please? Thank you!

motor_vehicle=discouraged is a much better tag from a bike routing point of view!

Yes, this relation (not "relationship") is a bicycle route relation. The one you've pointed to is a railway relation.

Probably needs reverting given that the contributor is unresponsive and it was an undiscussed automated edit.

Buggeration, forgot to close the changeset before starting something new. Sorry about that.

Hi - not sure what you were trying to achieve here but the bus=yes tag already indicates that PSV access is permitted. motor_vehicle should be no because the road is closed to private cars. I've changed it back.

Ha! That actually looks like an editor bug - the US element of the changeset wasn't actually changed (it's what I was looking at before, but didn't edit), so I'm not sure why P3 decided to upload it. But I don't have any excuse on that score given that I wrote P3. ;)

Hi! When you're adding a driveway to which the public has no access, could you make sure you add the tags service=driveway and access=private? Thank you.

Thank you!

Hi: there are reports in the EuroVelo discussion group on F*ceb**k that this route isn't rideable. Any idea? https://www.facebook.com/groups/2291565217760811/?multi_permalinks=2944508135799846

Hi - is way/104803566 really smoothness=impassable?

Adding motor_vehicle=discouraged is a good way of mapping roads where motor vehicles are allowed but there's signage discouraging use.

highway=service should only be used in a rural context like this if you add access tags (i.e. osm.wiki/Tag:motor_vehicle=, osm.wiki/Tag:bicycle=, osm.wiki/Tag:foot=, osm.wiki/Tag:horse=...). Otherwise it's difficult to distinguish from a farm road with no right of access.

Cool, maybe you can do that some time. I'll fix it remotely for now so that cyclists stop getting mistakenly getting diverted down there.

Until then, perhaps you could consider being a little less aggressive to other people in changeset comments (as per https://resultmaps.neis-one.org/osm-discussion-comments?uid=14846&commented), because it turns out that everyone makes mistakes sometimes.