OpenStreetMap

toronto cycleway improvements

Closed 8 months ago by JacksonDavey

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• Comment from Jarek 🚲 8 months ago

  Hello,

  Thanks for your edits to bike infrastructure in Toronto.

  I was wondering what your motivation for the changes to map bike ways as separate tracks is? This was not previously used in Toronto for standard street-side bike lanes or tracks; bike track information was encoded using cycleway=* tags on the main road. This preserved information like the class of road or speed limit of the road the cycleway runs along.

  Also to note, these are not called "Cycleways" in Toronto so the name tag is not really correct. Closest name is probably "cycle track" but it a description ("Danforth Avenue cycle tracks" as in cycle tracks along Danforth Avenue, not "Danforth Avenue Cycle Track" as a name) and not in any official names that I know of.

• Comment from Jarek 🚲 8 months ago

  For the record, see previous discussion for Toronto in early 2023 https://www.openstreetmap.org/note/3498476

• Comment from JacksonDavey 8 months ago

  Hi there,
  My reasoning for making the bike tracks separate came down to them having physical protection/separation to regular road traffic as I can see concrete barriers from satellite view. In my home city (Christchurch NZ) this is how our separated one-way cycleways have been mapped, this is also why they've been named "cycleways" (sorry about that I didn't know the terminology was different in NA). I will change them to be cycle tracks.

  Our cycleways are significantly different in New Zealand, as we generally either have standard bike lanes or something more permanent than parking protected bike lanes and more temporary protection like on Richmond street. Those aren't very common here so maybe I don't know the proper convention for these.

• Comment from JacksonDavey 8 months ago

  The convention that I have based this on can be seen with the cycleway on 35 Tuam Street, Christchurch, New Zealand. https://www.openstreetmap.org/node/5264984092. This was similar enough in my opinion to copy the conventions used as they both have some degree of physical protection.

• Comment from Jarek 🚲 8 months ago

  Thanks!

  Most of the "tracks" in Toronto are created without changing the roadway, by placing planters, pre-cast concrete curbs, and/or flex posts on the roadway. IMO this is borderline for "track", but it's different enough from the norm of painted lane that I don't mind cycleway=track tagging. But as it is on the same roadway, I'm not sure drawing a separate way for bicycles is worth it considering the downsides.

  (There are _some_ spots where roadway has been rebuilt to separate bicycles more - Bloor Street east of Bathurst comes to mind - but they're few and might not be on aerial imagery yet)

  For naming, if we were to go with separate ways, personally I would suggest to match the street name. The fact that it's a cycleway is already in highway=cycleway, and routers will use something like "turn right onto cycleway Richmond Street West" which seems better than "turn right onto cycleway Richmond West Cycle Track" because the former is the actual name of the street.

  Another note about mapping if using separate ways - please consider avoiding merging into main way at intersections, per https://community.openstreetmap.org/t/mapping-dedicated-cycleway-on-pavement-temporarily-merging-into-main-road/113840/3 (but I would note that the discussion on whether or not to do this is avoided when cycleways are mapped on the main street way)

  As you edit OSM please also keep in mind that different regions may have different tagging/mapping norms.

• Comment from Jarek 🚲 7 months ago

  Hello Jackson,

  with the new mapping with separate ways, routing looks like a mess:

  https://bin.piorkowski.ca/2024/2024-06-14%20bike%20track%20routing.png

  (screenshot of https://www.openstreetmap.org/directions?engine=graphhopper_bicycle&route=43.6465%2C-79.4387%3B43.6653%2C-79.4094 right now)

  12 instances of "turn slight right" / "keep right onto Bloor West Bike Track", and that's with the router actually giving up on the bike track for some of the distance (1100 m on Bloor Street West) - if it hadn't, there'd be even more of these instructions.

  In reality, you turn onto Bloor Street West and continue straight. There is no "slight right".

  I'm really not convinced this is an improvement, can you comment?

• Comment from JacksonDavey 7 months ago

  Hi, as you can probably imagine I intended to make the cycleway appear more prominent on the map due to it being a protected cycleway. I also wanted to make it appear a bit more separate because the cycle track is separated from the rest of the roadway by parking most of the time.

  Routing was not something I considered properly and that has been fixed now as I have put everything back into the main road segment. That way directions should just say to go straight.

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