Reporter: Spenny
[Submitted to the original trac issue database at 7.45pm, Sunday, 13th July 2014]

Routing for bicycles in the UK has a different default for trunk roads from that in Europe. This causes problems because European providers of maps default bicycle to no for routing purposes but in the UK it needs to be defaulted to bicycle yes unless explicitly marked.

In the UK, trunk roads can be fairly minor roads, single carriageway with no special crossings from one country lane on one side to the other. For example, in Germany, trunk roads are considered nearly autobahn standard. In the UK a trunk road may simply be a designation of the Highways Authority and relates more to an administrative status rather than a specific quality of road.

The solution is either to introduce an alternative tag in the UK, or to force a default of bicycle=yes for all UK trunk routes where the tag has not been set.

A simple example is http://www.openstreetmap.org/way/37284173#map=16/52.8874/-1.8992 where it is acceptable to cycle from Loxley Lane to Loxley Lane across a short section of Stafford Road (37284173) which will not route in European sourced mapping.