CityCyclingEdinburgh Forum » Debate!

Maps & qualitative assessment

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  1. Dave
    Member

    I think I've mentioned this before, but on the above subject last night's exploration reminded me of Cyclestreet's bizarre metric for route quality.

    Take Harrison St - the ratrun linking the A70 to the far side of the canal. Every time I ride this I am concerned for drivers trying to scrape past, playing chicken with oncoming vehicles and cutting up bikes (especially uphill). Cyclestreets give it a top "very quiet" status on the quality-o-meter.

    Then look at a busier road which, nonetheless, proves very agreeable for cycling. In extremis, I rode the A90 daily during the years I worked in Fife and *never* had any trouble. But as a more mundane example, consider riding the bus lanes on the A8 - about as agreeable as cycling can be, in many ways.

    Cyclestreets tells us this is "very hostile". Well, no. It is *busy* but while many would seek to avoid that, it is by no means *hostile* to share a bus lane with Lothian buses.

    Does anyone else think this is weird? I'd have "no through road / very quiet / quiet / average / busy / very busy / stationary" as my quietness metric, and then "friendly / agreeable / disagreeable / hostile" as the quality metric.

    Posted 13 years ago #

  2. chdot
    Admin

    CycleStreets uses the data from OpenStreetMap which anyone can update/improve/add too.

    Yeah the "hostile" is particularly unhelpful!

    Posted 13 years ago #

  3. Min
    Member

    It seems the only way to find out these things is to ride the route yourself which is unhelpful. I would also consider Harrison Road to be very hostile and as you have to ride up it to link from the Roseburn to the Towpath this is quite concering. I certainly don't know how anyone can describe it as "quiet"!

    I have also ridden on huge A roads and found them to be no problem at all. This is usually because they are so wide that even HGVs can pass with no difficulty and of course - blessing - no parked cars!

    But these things may just be subjective.

    Posted 13 years ago #

  4. chdot
    Admin

    "I certainly don't know how anyone can describe it as "quiet"!"

    The simple answer is a) OSM is inevitably subjective b) most roads are different at different times of the day - which doesn't help!

    I DO agree that Harrison Road is exceptionally unpleasant.

    Posted 13 years ago #

  5. SRD
    Moderator

    I DO agree that Harrison Road is exceptionally unpleasant.

    Especially for the drivers who have to contend with Spytfyre glaring at them (see old threads :)

    Posted 13 years ago #

  6. wingpig
    Member

    I think I just passed a mention somewhere on CycleStreets or OSM about time-of-day being rather impactful and thus destined for consideration at some point. Hopefully the threateningness as well as the busyness will be time-variable.

    The hostility of a road very much depends on what you're trying to do on it. Sticking to the bus lane is often fine whereas trying to get round a stationary bus (or delivery vehicle) blocking the entire bus lane with nose-to-tail 40mph traffic passing a foot to its right preventing you getting around the blockage is less fine. Sticking to a bus lane to go left or take the "AND BUSES" straight-ahead option is fine whereas crossing a couple of lanes to get to a right-hand filter without the benefit of a red traffic light can sometimes be tricky if no-one wants to let you out. I assume OSM's junctions carry permissible-routing information but haven't looked to see if the differing easinesses of different manoeuvres can be attributed.

    Posted 13 years ago #

  7. Dave
    Member

    All true. The problem with open source is that my complaint is really "why haven't I fixed this" ;-)

    I suppose the problem illustrated in the above post is that quietness / hostility / routing are also heavily dependant on the individual. So only one person is ever going to be happy with Cyclestreets rulings (I suppose you could log in and set a bunch of parameters like "I don't mind passing buses that have stopped: 1-5")?

    Posted 13 years ago #

  8. wingpig
    Member

    I've been meaning to get round to signing up and logging-in to do some updating of stuff to OSM/CS since finding a couple of bits that the app repeatedly tries to route me down which are blocked by a shut door or a large fence. Wonder if I'll ever get round to doing it, much the same as I never get round to telling Spokes about some of the cobble-labelling omissions on their map?

    Posted 13 years ago #

  9. chrisfl
    Member

    As far as I know they base the hostile-ness of a road on it's category So a B road is less hostile than an A road and unclassified and residential streets are thought to be quiet.

    However in cities I think this breaks down quite quickly. So unclassified roads tend to get rated as quiet, which in the city often isn't the case. The cyclestreets guys have been promising a blog post on how they use OSM tagging to determine routes for some time...

    wingpig: Even if you don't have time to edit, then stick a quick bug in using: OpenStreetBugs

    Posted 13 years ago #

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