RLIS

Streets

OSM street types are based on United Kingdom classifications rather than American standards. Converting RLIS street types to OSM street types proved somewhat difficult. Additionally, RLIS street types seem to be based on physical characteristics while OSM street types tend to be based on functionality and physical characteristics. To make our conversion table, we used jurisdictional metadata, the OSM wiki, examples in OSM, and the OSM community. Once we started editing, we continued to change OSM types on a case by case basis. For example:

• Residential streets with a stripe on the road were upgraded to tertiary in OSM.
• The OSM street type “trunk” is difficult to define for American roads because trunk is a European designation. We had to make up our own standards for trunk. We defined trunk as a highway with occasional grade level intersections and limited access, but not quite as limited as a motorway (freeway). In some states, non-motorized vehicles are not allowed, but in many states, including Oregon, many trunks and motorways allow non-motorized vehicles; therefore, we could not use this as a defining characteristic.

Trails

Initially, we converted all trails to highway=path. However, we quickly learned this was inaccurate.

• Our trail and street datasets overlapped, so in some places, ways are considered part of a trail, but also a service road for vehicles. We had to go back and review each of these overlaps to determine which designation was most accurate - could motorized vehicles fit on the way? Should it be tagged as a highway=track (service road) or highway=path?
• OSM users sometimes switch trails back and forth between footway and path. These two are similar but footway indicates a heavier use by pedestrians, and not necessarily exclusive of other users, while path indicates an equal balance between pedestrians, cyclists, and other users. Eventually, we settled on adding access tags (see below) to ensure that the ongoing OSM user battles would not affect routing capabilities.

Surface:

• Surface data was included in the trail dataset. We had some trouble converting RLIS trail surface attributes to OSM attributes because the available OSM tags were limited. We ended up with some paths alternating between pebblestone, ground, and paved surfaces. Perhaps it would have been better to keep the conversion simple: paved vs ground.

Access:

• Access refers to what users are allowed on the way. For example, sometimes only motorized vehicles are allowed on the way, sometimes only emergency vehicles, and sometimes only pedestrians.
• Access tags are particularly relevant for trails, paths, and bike routes. We learned that certain highway types are contentious, such as cycleway vs. path vs. footway, so we later decided to include foot=* and bicycle=* on all paths and trails.
• Additionally, state law allows cyclists on most motorways except a few. Because this is different than some states, we are trying to add bicycle=yes where bicycles are allowed on the motorways and bicycle=no where they are not. Finally, we are adding bicycle=designated for streets and paths that include bicycle infrastructure.
• foot=yes/no/designated follows the same line of reasoning as bicycle access tags.

Bicycles

Bike routes can be controversial. We tagged for bike routes because OpenTripPlanner needs to know what streets or paths can be accessed by cyclists and which streets or paths are safest if a user indicates he/she prefers safer routes. Safety can be subjective, so we tried to use tags that did not indicate preferences, just objective observations.

RLIS has multiple types of bike routes - some have infrastructure to indicate a bike route (traffic calming devices, painted signs on the road, etc), while others are just low,medium, or high traffic through streets that RLIS maintainers thinks might be a good bike route. Because the bike routes indicated by RLIS maintainers are used on a variety of bike maps handed out by bicycle shops, groups, and online, we felt that even the ways without infrastructure were important to tag.

We created some tags because OSM tags were insufficient, and we were afraid that conflicts over bicycle=* tags would result in edit wars. Two such tags are RLIS:bicycle=designated and RLIS:bicycle=caution_area. We applied RLIS:bicycle=designated to all ways that have any sort of bike route designation in RLIS, whether it is due to bicycle infrastructure or an RLIS maintainer’s opinion (though most of these have since been deleted and replaced with bicycle=designated. RLIS:bicycle=caution_area indicates ways that connect bike routes and are often considered part of a bike route, but may be dangerous due to small shoulders, high traffic, low visibility, or some other reason.

We are also using a tag that is only proposed because no other tag seemed sufficient - cycleway=shared_lane. We use this for Portland’s bicycle boulevards, which do not have a bike lane, but rather share a lane with traffic. However, the traffic is usually low, “sharrows” are painted every couple hundred feet to indicate bicycle traffic, and traffic calming devices are often used.

Finally, for paths in the RLIS bike route dataset, we add bicycle=designated along with RLIS:bicycle=designated.

Our early tagging proposal: https://spreadsheets.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0AtPC2OnLzHFSdHBYUGdNMkItMGdVNm4wSWFwLXdzdFE&hl=en_US&authkey=CMj58IsB

If you're curious about how bicycle tags affect routing with TriMet's implementation of OpenTripPlanner, see OpenTripPlanner#How_OpenTripPlanner_uses_OSM_tags_for_routing.

Turn restrictions

Various datasets were used for turn restrictions, from aerials and VISSUM (by Metro) to sign inventories and limited turn restriction datasets from various jurisdictions. Turn restrictions are added manually using JOSM with the Turn Restrictions plugin.

Speed limits

Various datasets from local cities and counties were used to find maxspeed=* values as well.

Waterways

A few different RLIS datasets offer information on waterways, and all of these were used along with aerials in our waterway edits.