On 2021-03-09 19:54:09 UTC stevea wrote:
> On 2021-03-09 19:28:23 UTC broadway_lamb wrote:
>
> > Thank you for such a detailed answer!
> >
>
>
> You are welcome!
>
> > My main question is, if a route is not marked, how do we distinguish between "what some people feel like is a good bicycle ride" and a route that is worth mapping like GDMBR?
> >
>
> That is a question that rides the edge between what we (in the USA, by no means "the only correct method") call simply "what some people feel like a good bicycle route" and what we have in the USA which we call "quasi-national routes." These are routes which ARE signed, they are thousands (or hundreds) of kilometers long, and so they are so significant in the world of bicycle riding that they "rise to the level of a national route" and we call these quasi-national bicycle routes. However, because the USA has only a single national bicycle network (the numbered USBRS, "national routes," this system/network is still developing over decades and only about 30% complete), and the three or four routes which we consider to be "quasi-national" are so very major and lengthy (compared to local or regional / statewide) routes, we had to make some decisions.
>
> The decisions are that there is only one national network (numbered, official, signed, government-approved): the USBRS and any other routes which are "so large as to be national in scope" (the three or four quasi-national routes), these cannot be numbered nor use the same kinds of signs, they MUST be signed, and we distinguish them further with the cycle_network key (values are US:US for USBRS routes and US for quasi-national routes, as each of them is "independent" of any other route and are not members of a "system of routes").
>
> We are quite firm that if a route is not signed, AND it is not published by a government, it falls down to the category of "not a route," and should not get any relation tagged type=route, route=bicycle and network=* tags (where * is either ncn, rcn or lcn — see our wiki about bicycle and bicycle routes to understand how to use these). The idea in being strict like this is that ONLY government routes and SIGNED routes will get lcn, rcn, ncn tags. Otherwise, everything else is a "free for all" and you would have a crazy "whatever we feel like is a good bike ride" appear in OSM as routes and that isn't correct.
>
> In the USA, we DO have people who want to put these ("a good bike ride") somewhere on the Internet, there are web sites like
www.RideWithGPS.com that allow you to upload and manage "private" routes that are not "official" (government or signed or both) routes. Please read the wiki I have pointed you towards and you will get a flavor for some of the issues involved and how careful you must be for good rules to be established in a country, otherwise, OSM becomes a "free for all" mess of bike routes which are "unofficial" and "we feel like this a good bike ride."
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> > For example, if a route similar to GDMBR (but in Russia) has a website, a dedicated team of enthusiasts maintaining it, and is not copyrighted, what other conditions should it satisfy in order to be worth mapping?
>
