Philip Durbin (May 25 2025 at 20:29): Philip Durbin (May 25 2025 at 20:29):A couple weeks ago at Bike Stress Map was announced: https://bostoncyclistsunion.org/bcu-labs-launches-bike-stress-map
Philip Durbin (May 25 2025 at 20:30):It's a fantastic resource but I'm wondering if can help improve it. Here's a direct link to the map: https://labs.bostoncyclistsunion.org/#/map
Philip Durbin (May 25 2025 at 20:31):They say, "You can learn to fix the data yourself here, or fill out this form with what you know and the BCU Labs team will bike there ourselves to survey, then fix the data."
Philip Durbin (May 25 2025 at 20:36):@Dan the "fix it yourself" link is for OpenStreetMaps (OSM) and I wonder if you have any experience correctly speed limits on OSM. Beacon Street (where Hamilton is, by the way) shows 50 mph on the Bike Stress Map but it should be 25. (Brookline has special Town-wide Statutory Speed Limit of 25 mph "special Town-wide Statutory Speed Limit of 25 mph".)
Philip Durbin (May 25 2025 at 20:37):Also, the Bike Street Map code itself is open source! It's part of https://github.com/BostonCyclistsUnion/Website and I was able to get it running quite easily by following the README.
Dan (May 25 2025 at 21:03):Oh yes I've heard of a couple Bike Stress projects, one of them may be this one. The other one wasn't even OSM. I think it's a wider concept.
Dan (May 25 2025 at 21:04):I usually pay attention to speed limits on highways and I think it's pretty close. I've seen it wrong. City I haven't paid so much attention.
Dan (May 25 2025 at 21:06):Maybe it would be acceptable to mass edit Brookline based on this webpage. I'll check the OSM slack, there are regional channels. Maybe there's one for Boston, otherwise the Mass one.
Dave Hanft (May 25 2025 at 21:11):Are these just “overall ratings” ? Stress Level seems heavily influenced by congestion no?
Dan (May 25 2025 at 21:13):Okay this is interesting. I can't concentrate enough on this now but OSM has a concept of "default speed limits" but I'm not sure how much it relates to municipality. It might be the case that the consumer of the data (i.e. this stress map) should pull in a separate dataset that has default speed limits to fill in the blanks in OSM data.
https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Default_speed_limits
But I have to read it more carefully.
Dan (May 25 2025 at 21:15):Ah no it's by country.
Dan (May 25 2025 at 21:15):So I'll ask the Slack.
Dan (May 25 2025 at 21:22):Where do you see 50 MPH for Beacon? I wonder if it's assuming the US default speed limit.
Dan (May 25 2025 at 21:22):I don't see speed limit on the bike stress map. Lots of other details but not that.
Dan (May 25 2025 at 21:33):Do all of the streets have signs indicating the 25 mph limit as well? The may affect whether it's appropriate to mass edit it in. If the signs aren't there, I'd be worried that people won't know to change it if the law changes.
But at worst case we could find all the missing speed limits and enter them. We'd do a lot of walking or biking! Less hacking.
Philip Durbin (May 25 2025 at 21:49):If you click "show advanced details" and scroll down, you should see "prevailing speed (assumed)", like this:
Philip Durbin (May 25 2025 at 21:50):And at the bottom of this segment (in front of Hamilton), it links here: https://www.openstreetmap.org/way/8814642
Dan (May 25 2025 at 22:01):Okay I looked at that, I just missed it. Thanks.
Dan (May 25 2025 at 23:05):Wait, oops. We can't do a mass edit to 25 mph. We don't know if all of the unspecified streets are actually 25 mph.
Dan (May 25 2025 at 23:05):Some might be lower. BUT - BCU labs could change their default for Brookline.
Dan (May 25 2025 at 23:08):I don't think there's even anything useful to ask the OSM Slack. I think we should just poke at the project. See if we can set the default speed limit to max out at 25 if the municipality is Brookline. That could be a group task! (In addition to maybe setting some speed limits manually if you want me to run you through that)
When do you want to do this?
Philip Durbin (May 25 2025 at 23:11):Their "join BCU labs" link says we can join their Slack. I think I'll start there.
Philip Durbin (May 25 2025 at 23:14):done
Dan (May 25 2025 at 23:14):Cool keep us posted I guess.
Philip Durbin (May 26 2025 at 00:16):Dave Hanft said:
Are these just “overall ratings” ? Stress Level seems heavily influenced by congestion no?
From https://labs.bostoncyclistsunion.org/#/map you can read about their methodology.
It does say, "factors like fast and heavy traffic can still make it stressful."
Philip Durbin (May 26 2025 at 00:31):OSM is interesting. I'm looked at https://www.openstreetmap.org/way/8648038 which I know has a dedicated bike lane going north but no such dedicated bike lane going south. Does the OSM data reflect this? I'm not sure. :thinking:
Dan (May 26 2025 at 00:42):I think so. I think that's what the cycleway:* tags are saying. On the left it's a shared lane with a pictogram, i.e. one of those "sharrow" things painted. On the right it's an exclusive bike lane.
And right and left are determined by the direction of the line that defines the road. In OSM all lines are directional.
Dan (May 26 2025 at 00:43):You can click on those tags too, it'll send you to the OSM wiki and it'll confirm or refute what I just assumed here.
Dan (May 26 2025 at 00:44):tag names and sometimes even values have their own wiki page.
Philip Durbin (May 26 2025 at 02:01):I was wondering about right and left. What about a road like https://www.openstreetmap.org/way/8814302 that goes (more or less) east/west? Is cycleway:left on north or south side of the street?
Dan (May 26 2025 at 02:09):It's the direction of the line, not left-right in absolute terms. But the direction is not visible here. I'm not sure if there's a fast way to show you, but in the editor you can see an arrow indicating which end of the line is "forward". And from there you can determine "left" and "right".
Dan (May 26 2025 at 02:10):Technically the line is called a "way".
Dan (May 26 2025 at 02:14):This is in the web editor:
Screenshot_2025-05-25_22-12-05.png
The arrows point right. So the "right" side of the street is south.
Dan (May 26 2025 at 02:15):I guess a way of thinking of it is that a "way" is an ordered collection of "nodes" (points). Which means there's a first node and a last node. That determines the direction of the way.
Philip Durbin (May 26 2025 at 02:16):Ok, thanks. Bummer that I can't see the arrows.
Dan (May 26 2025 at 02:17):Well if you're sufficiently interested you can sign up. Once you're logged in you can just click the "edit" button and it'll bring you to the editor.
Philip Durbin (May 26 2025 at 02:19):I'm getting there. :smile:
Philip Durbin (May 26 2025 at 02:20):I just checked Google Maps and they don't show which side the bike lane is on. They just flag the entire street as bike friendly. Way less helpful than in could be. But as we've been discussing OSM has the data, which is great!
Philip Durbin (May 26 2025 at 02:29):https://www.cyclosm.org actually seems pretty good. It shows which sides of the streets the bike lanes are on. However, to my eyes the dedicated bike lanes and what they call shared bike lanes (which are actually not a bike lane at all) look way too similar. Both are dashed. Both blue. It would be nice if I could change the color of one of them.
Philip Durbin (May 26 2025 at 02:47):I opened an issue: https://github.com/cyclosm/cyclosm-cartocss-style/issues/700
Dan (May 26 2025 at 11:51):How is it a "limitation of OSM tags"? But the rest makes sense I guess.
Philip Durbin (May 26 2025 at 12:35):I just left another reply.
Philip Durbin (May 26 2025 at 12:35):Do you think we could mark that southbound lane as not a shared lane, as just a regular road?
Dan (May 26 2025 at 14:11):If it has a sharrow I think it should be a shared lane.
Dan (May 26 2025 at 14:12):Maybe there's another metric that indicates how much it sucks. Like I saw widths listed some places.
Dan (May 26 2025 at 14:12):Maybe not for individual lanes though.
Dan (May 26 2025 at 14:13):BTW there's also opencyclemap. I wonder if they render in a more useful way.
Dan (May 26 2025 at 14:15):If there is a sharrow maybe you should have the city "edit their map" so to speak.
Dan (May 26 2025 at 14:19):You could also look at the history of the edit and see if the person gave a reason for the change. Though there aren't proper diffs. And people don't tend to give good comments.
Dan (May 26 2025 at 14:26):Look for "View History" at the bottom if you're looking at an element. Also BTW if you're just looking at the map on openstreetmap.org and want to select an element, right click and select "Query Features". It'll find things nearby.
Philip Durbin (May 26 2025 at 14:31):Thanks for the tip about https://www.opencyclemap.org . From a quick look, it seems better. It only shows the northbound bike lane correctly and nothing special southbound, which is accurate. It makes me wonder about the underlying data. Is southbound marked as a shared lane or not? :thinking:
Philip Durbin (May 26 2025 at 14:33):I'm not sure what to say about the sharrows. Feels like semantics on some level. Like you say, it's more about the width. There's no room for a car to pass a bike.
Dan (May 26 2025 at 14:35):Isn't that sort of the definition of a shared lane though? The bike is a car.
Dan (May 26 2025 at 14:36):Hmm well I guess that's not always true for sharrows.
Dan (May 26 2025 at 14:37):The thing is that OSM prefers objective measures. "I don't think this is good for bikes" is probably not the sort of justification they're looking for. "This has a sharrow" or "the city website says" is more proper.
Dan (May 26 2025 at 14:38):To see the underlying data, find the street on openstreetmap.org and right click to Query Features.
Philip Durbin (May 26 2025 at 14:39):As possible solution for me would be a "hide shared lanes" button.
Dan (May 26 2025 at 14:40):Right. The apps that use the data is where preferences are just fine. And an app that says "hide shared lanes unless they're X meters wide or more" might be the solution.
Philip Durbin (May 26 2025 at 15:45):Cycle Map (from the main OSM website) seem to give what I want. It hides the shared lanes.
Philip Durbin (May 26 2025 at 15:45):Here's a good write up:
"A major difference would be that opencyclemap mostly just displays designated bicycle routes and a few cycling adjacent amenities. Cyclsom on the other hand also displays roads with lower speed limits and the locations of traffic calming measures. They also show roads that have the bicycle=shared_lane tag, which opencyclemap doesn't make note of.
Consequently, I find opencyclemap easier to read if you're only looking for routes, because they're much more prominent and it's not as visually cluttered. However I do prefer Cyclosm because I get a better understanding of the road conditions, especially on roads that aren't on designated cycling routes."
Dan (May 26 2025 at 17:25):The taxonomy of OSM frustrates me sometimes. It's so messy. If you ever get confused as you dig into it don't be surprised.
Dan (May 26 2025 at 17:26):(Just adding an establishment now, it reminded me)
Philip Durbin (May 26 2025 at 18:20):I'm hoping the Bike Stress Map folks can guide me a bit. I filled in the form. Hoping I get a Slack invite.
Dan (May 26 2025 at 19:24):Yeah lmk what turns up
Philip Durbin (May 31 2025 at 11:43):Still no word from them. :disappointed:
Philip Durbin (May 31 2025 at 12:06):Meanwhile I just made this reply: https://github.com/cyclosm/cyclosm-cartocss-style/issues/700#issuecomment-2925090750
I suppose you're both right, that I should go trying to change the OSM data. There are sharrows painted on the road. Not that they do anything!
Philip Durbin (May 31 2025 at 12:07):
Philip Durbin (May 31 2025 at 16:59):So, from a route I'm planning, https://www.opencyclemap.org seems to be the most accurate in terms of which streets have bike lanes. However, Organic Maps doesn't seem to use this data. Is there some other app I can use on Android that would show me what I see (in terms of bike lanes) on https://www.opencyclemap.org ?
Philip Durbin (May 31 2025 at 18:36):I'm trying Locus Map and it's allowing me to see OpenCycleMap data. I saw it mentioned at https://community.openstreetmap.org/t/open-cycle-map-in-which-apps-is-it-embeded/94811/4
Dan (May 31 2025 at 20:07):Cool I've never heard of it. I don't know what to use on Android. I bet Organic Maps would have the goal of being among the best for that.
Dan (May 31 2025 at 20:07):I don't know what else to use.
Philip Durbin (May 31 2025 at 20:54):Maybe I should ask the Organic Maps folks.
Philip Durbin (May 31 2025 at 20:54):The OpenCycleMap data is interesting. It's free to use online but to download it you have to pay.
Dan (May 31 2025 at 22:11):Weird. I wonder how that works license wise. Wrt osm's db license
Philip Durbin (Jun 01 2025 at 00:27):I'm also highly confused about where the data about bike maps lives.
https://www.opencyclemap.org has a link that says "Edit OpenStreetMap data here".
https://www.cyclosm.org has link that says "Edit the map".
https://labs.bostoncyclistsunion.org/#/map (the stress map) has a link to update the map.
But the bike maps all look different. :shrug:
Philip Durbin (Jun 01 2025 at 00:27):Ideally, I'd contribute to some sort of commons, like Wikipedia.
Dan (Jun 01 2025 at 01:46):OSM is the source for all of them. (They possibly have secondary sources but that's not why it looks different)
Dan (Jun 01 2025 at 01:48):As an OSM app you can choose what data to surface and how to display it. That applied to the dotted lines for bike lane vs shared lane. But it also applies to the underlying map tiles. For instance openstreetmap.org shows most establishments. opencyclemap iirc only shows bars cafes and probably bike shops. That's on the base tile data.
Dan (Jun 01 2025 at 01:50):For the streets, could have different style settings for types of streets, they could be showing different types of streets altogether, or they could be using a different library altogether to do the rendering. Some websites render to vector graphics. There's multiple ways to do everything, it's a bit overwhelming.
Philip Durbin (Jun 01 2025 at 17:08):Ok, but the underlying data is common, it sounds like. Sort of like Wikipedia. That's good.
Philip Durbin (Jun 01 2025 at 18:22):I'm in! I just joined the stress map slack.
Dan (Jun 01 2025 at 18:45):We got a man on the inside
Philip Durbin (Jun 01 2025 at 19:12):ha
Philip Durbin (Jun 03 2025 at 01:01):As luck would have it their monthly meeting was today! I just got out of it.
Seems like a really great group of people. Like me, they just want better biking in and around Boston.
Philip Durbin (Jun 03 2025 at 01:01):I let them know about #boston > State of the Map US 2025 (even linked to that thread), which they appreciated.
Philip Durbin (Jun 03 2025 at 01:03):And I explained how https://www.opencyclemap.org shows if a street has a bike lane only on one side, which even Google Maps doesn't do. And I pointed out the app I'm using on Android to consume that data: https://www.locusmap.app
Philip Durbin (Jun 03 2025 at 01:04):On the call I heard good things about https://geovelo.app which is already linked from https://labs.bostoncyclistsunion.org/#/map/OSM
Philip Durbin (Jun 03 2025 at 01:06):They also talked about https://masstrailtracker.com which seems really cool.
Philip Durbin (Jun 03 2025 at 01:07):As for code, I asked where the maps pulls from Mapbox and it's here: https://github.com/BostonCyclistsUnion/Website/blob/e53d05c9ad5bafc81b00d8c995f3537168b62344/src/Map.jsx#L106
Philip Durbin (Jun 03 2025 at 01:07):https://github.com/BostonCyclistsUnion/StressMap pulls from OSM and pushes to Mapbox.
Philip Durbin (Jun 03 2025 at 01:08):So I have a better sense of the architecture now.
Philip Durbin (Jun 03 2025 at 01:08):Also, I invited them to our meetup! I'll probably link them to this thread. :smile:
Philip Durbin (Jun 03 2025 at 02:09):Philip Durbin said:
They also talked about https://masstrailtracker.com which seems really cool.
I uploaded the GeoJSON file to https://demo.dataverse.org/file.xhtml?persistentId=doi:10.70122/FK2/0PW3IS/RDRHKD&version=1.0 and it looks pretty good! :smile:
Dan (Jun 03 2025 at 15:52):Did they not know about SOTM coming up? I'd be surprised.
Dan (Jun 03 2025 at 15:55):So is it something like, they process raw OSM data, they send what they want to Mapbox, Mapbox renders it for them for use in their frontend?
Philip Durbin (Jun 03 2025 at 22:33):They new about it.
Philip Durbin (Jun 03 2025 at 22:33):And yes, you've got it.
Philip Durbin (Jun 03 2025 at 23:41):These are the two issues I opened (after talking to them about it first, last night):
Dan (Jun 04 2025 at 02:11):Did you talk to them about the speed limit in Brookline?
Dan (Jun 04 2025 at 02:19):Hmm so cycleway:left=lane works but cycleway:right=lane doesn't?
Philip Durbin (Jun 04 2025 at 02:27):Yep. 25 mph
Philip Durbin (Jun 04 2025 at 02:27):I think they both don't work
Philip Durbin (Jun 04 2025 at 02:29):I see cycleway stuff in the stressmap repo so I think I opened the bug in the right place. Here, for example: https://github.com/BostonCyclistsUnion/StressMap/blob/aa754c22b1e95a96f53f1f1363baf57aef3a95ca/lts_functions.py#L181
Dan (Jun 04 2025 at 20:08):Philip Durbin said:
Yep. 25 mph
Did you talk about fixing it? I'm just curious what they say about it.
Philip Durbin (Jun 04 2025 at 22:20):I'm trying to remember. We definitely touched on it. Not sure what the plan is. This issue is definitely related: Roads with no speed limit data in OSM have very high inferred speed limits https://github.com/BostonCyclistsUnion/StressMap/issues/25
Philip Durbin (Jun 04 2025 at 22:51):I'm sure you'd be welcome to join their Slack!
Dan (Jun 05 2025 at 01:55):Yep that covers it
Dan (Jul 01 2025 at 15:00):I just learned about this map (or was just reminded of it). https://demo.f4map.com So cool! But I only got it working on my phone running Chromium.
Zoom in, two-finger scroll to rotate, wait for trees and buildings and walls to pop up :-)
Philip Durbin (Jul 02 2025 at 11:00):Huh, yeah, very cool.
Screenshot 2025-07-02 at 6.58.51 AM.png
Dan (Jul 02 2025 at 12:58):Everything is from OSM except for some "special" buildings like the Eiffel Tower. But most domes and things are in OSM. Someone even constructed a cross on a church that shows up here.
Philip Durbin (Jul 20 2025 at 21:21):"Curated routes through Boston along with their stress levels: https://tlangs.github.io/boston-landway/#stress-map " by https://github.com/tlangs
Dan (Oct 05 2025 at 20:01):Not too long ago I got a bike mount at REI (right before the previous meetup we had at Time Out).
I just let Organic Maps guide me from Medford to Chinatown and I thought I don't think I could have asked for a better route! Dedicated lanes most of the way I think. I wonder if Brookline isn't mapped so well? If you're saying you're not as impressed with the routing there.
Philip Durbin (Oct 05 2025 at 21:33):Huh. I've never used Organic Maps for directions but I'll have to give it a try.
Dan (Oct 06 2025 at 17:35):Do you have a different app or do you just not do nav on bicycle? It's a new experience for me and it's kind of a trip.
Philip Durbin (Oct 06 2025 at 21:59):I don't do nav on a bike. Maybe I should try it. :smile:
Last updated: Nov 11 2025 at 06:28 UTC