Who am I?

• I am a person in the south of England
• I mostly ride a bicycle, walk, catch buses and trains
• I’m a Committee Member of Cycle Basingstoke - we have been working with the Council on the Basingstoke Cycling Strategy - and OSM is useful to illustrate points (not least because it is more up-to-date than closed maps)

What do I use OSM for?

• Cycling and walking maps - usually OpenCycleMap osm.wiki/OpenCycleMap
• Cycling journey planning with Cycle.Travel. I used to use CycleStreets, MapQuest Open, CloudMade.
• Public transport journey planning with Traveline South West, which includes the walk at either end of the journey
• Walking journey planning using the Locus Map Classic app
• Bus maps - usually Transport Map osm.wiki/Transport_Map
• Reporting problems in the local area with FixMyStreet

Map things that I’m interested in

Roads

• Speed limits
• Type of road
• Number of lanes
• surface=asphalt/concrete/compacted/gravel/dirt/sand/mud and tracktype (if not paved)
• smoothness (paved roads can have really bad potholes, dirt tracks can be smooth sometimes)
• lit=yes/no
• Ensuring that restrictions that actually apply only to one class of vehicle (e.g. motor vehicles) are not applied to all
• Ensuring that private routes are tagged accordingly, so journey planners don’t use them
• On-road cycling facilities and bus lanes
• Roundabouts, oneway streets, dual carriageways - tend to have negative effects on my journeys
• Names
• Traffic calming

Cycling infrastructure (shared use paths, segregated paths, dedicated cycle tracks)

• surface=asphalt/concrete/compacted/gravel/dirt/sand/mud
• lit=yes/no
• segregated=yes/no
• width
• kerbs and tactile paving on crossings
• Barriers, such as gates, bollards, cycle barriers, that slow down cyclists

Footpaths, Public Rights of Way, and ORPAs

• surface=asphalt/concrete/compacted/gravel/dirt/sand/mud
• tracktype
• smoothness
• lit=yes/no
• Who is allowed to use it (if it’s a right of way). I tend to use “private” rather than “no” for modes not legally allowed.
• For footpaths where journey planners assume that dismounted bicycles can be pushed, mark impassable paths (e.g. ones with stiles, narrow kissing gates, or just too narrow) with bicycle=no to prevent routing
• Barriers

Relations

• NCN, RCN, LCN
• MTB - if something is part of an MTB relation, it’s probably not good for my bike
• Bus routes and stops (sometimes)

Points of interest and landmarks

• Farms, churches, and woods make good landmarks in the countryside, or to describe places to other people
• Cafes, pubs, supermarkets, and stations are either destinations or landmarks
• Benches and toilets

Developments

• Developments (residential or commercial) affect routing and traffic flow

Tools

• OnePlus 7 Pro, the OSMTracker app, and the Locus Map Classic app
• Usually from a bicycle, a bus, or on foot
• I got a cheap handlebar bag recently, so that should make it easier to make notes as I go
• Mapillary (Mapillary description), either directly from my old phone (OnePlus 3T), or by converting the videos from my Cycliq or CrossTour bike cameras
• I use Potlatch 3and iD

Style

General

• I avoid combining building/landuse/natural areas and linear barriers with routable highways - e.g. unless a fence actually reaches the centre-line of the road, I end it at the edge of the road. An exception is tunnel=building_passage, where the tunnel is effectively part of the building
• I treat highways (which are recorded as 1D lines despite being 2D areas in reality) as representing the centre line of the road
• For PROWs, I use the physical highway type (e.g. track), rather than the legal one. As a result, I then use multiple *=private to exclude certain types of traffic
• For PROWs, I record the legal rights of way for foot, bicycle, horse, motor_vehicle (since journey planners do not generally use the designation tag)
• For public highways that are not PROWs, if the access matches the default for that highway type, I don’t record the access
• For Public Bridleways, I use the old UK Tagging Guidelines (bicycle=yes, horse=designated, foot=designated)
• Where an amenity (e.g. pub, shop, café, bed & breakfast) is the main occupant of a building (or a floor of that building) I tend to add the amenity tags to the building rather than having a separate disconnected node

Cycling infrastructure

• For off-road cycle paths and cycle tracks, I generally aim for the following, which will allow bicycles and pedestrians to be routed along it: highway=cycleway/path (path for narrow paths or towpaths), bicycle=designated, foot=designated (unless it’s a cycle track with no pedestrian access), segregated=no/yes, surface=asphalt/concrete/compacted/gravel/dirt/sand/mud, lit=yes/no
• For on-road stuff, I add cycleway=shared_lane/lane/track/share_busway (or cycleway:left/right). For contraflow cycle routes, I add oneway:bicycle=no as well as the type of cycleway. For cycleway=lane, I have started adding cycleway:lane=advisory/exclusive.
• In both cases, cycleway:est_width/cycleway:width are important, to indicate paths or lanes that are too narrow (eg between Ottershaw and Woking - less than a metre wide for a two-way shared use footway)

Crossings

• I tend to tag traffic lights on the stop lines with traffic_signals:direction=forward/backward, and pelican/toucan/Pegasus crossings at the crossing point, rather than merging everything into one node
• Crossings slow down traffic along a highway, but help pedestrian (and bicycle if relevant) traffic across the highway
• Where the crossings are not simple (e.g. around roundabouts or dual carriageways, or staggered crossings), I add the footways for more accurate routing
• I tend to end footways at dropped kerbs if possible (to cater for people with mobility issues, pushchairs, wheelchairs, luggage, etc.)

Contacting me

• Since I changed my email address, changeset comments are working for me.
• You can also find me on Twitter @jonpsp