Project of the week/2010/Dec 15
Bicycle parking
We want to watch our waistlines and our carbon consumption so we like to ride our bikes more than we used to do. That's fine when we take a trip for the sake of a trip, but what about when we want to pick up the groceries, or borrow a book from the library? We need a safe place to put our bike so that it won't impede others and so that it will be there for us when we need it again. We need a bike rack.
The Project of the Week is to map your local bicycle parking infrastructure.
Tagging suggestions
Bicycle parking can be mapped as a point or an area. As with other objects in OpenStreetMap, best practice is to only map an object once. That is, as a point or as an area, but not as bicycle parking area, with bicycle parking points within it.
Required tags
The only required tags for bicycle parking are
Recommended tags
It is recommended to also include a capacity tag for bicycle parking.
- capacity=# # numeric value only for capacity
Optional tags
Other tags might also be important for some bicycle parking locations.
- covered=yes # for bicycle parking protected from the elements
- access=* # add access details for bicycle parking that is not public
- fee=* # add yes or an amount for paid bicycle parking
Tutorial
If you haven't used OpenStreetMap editors before, you might find this tutorial for adding bicycle parking helpful.
Surrounding amenities
Bicycle parking is generally a supporting amenity, rather than a primary destination. Why not map the nearby destination, grocery store, library, or school, when you add the bike rack?
Be sure to include the address of the nearest buildings as well.
Viewing
User:Gregoryw maintains a heatmap of cycle parking. Have a look!
Results
These graphs show the number of bicycle parking nodes and polygons in the OpenStreetMap database and are updated once per hour.
http://rweait.dev.openstreetmap.org/osmbikeparkpt-week.png http://rweait.dev.openstreetmap.org/osmbikeparkpol-week.png
