Correcting Dutch 75+cm wide bicycle routing a.k.a. the bicycle=no disease
Posted by vakantieland dot nl on 23 August 2018 in English.Some Brouter profiles even contain a switch to just ignore bicycle=no tags because of massive incorrect tagging.
Mandatory cycle way (G11 or G12a) is not equal to forbidden for bicycles (bicycle=no)
I can’t blame the previous editors as large parts of the Dutch police force have little knowledge about traffic regulations for bicycles as well. And road authorities seem to have no tools to draw cyclists’ attention to the presence of adjacent mandatory bicycle lanes, other then to (ab)use a prohibitory sign C14 or C15.
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In case anyone would like to help?
After a week of effort and 400+ edits, the secondary roads of nearly 2 out of 12 Dutch provinces have manually been reviewed using street level images for bicycle=no assignment that should have been bicycle=use_sidepath.
This is the Overpass turbo query for JOSM export I used to find the suspects for a correctional edit:
[out:xml][timeout:25];
(
way["highway"="secondary"]["bicycle"="no"]({{bbox}});
way["highway"="secondary_link"]["bicycle"="no"]({{bbox}});
);
// print results
(._;>;); out meta;
ToDo:
- North of The Hague/Nijmegen
- South of Eindhoven

Discussion
Comment from gileri on 23 August 2018 at 12:35
I’m not familiar with the area, but if the bicycle path is mandatory, wouldn’t that mean that the “main road” is forbidden for bicycles, even without C14/C15 signs ? If that’s the case, bicycle=no on the road is valid if the bicycle path is mapped as a separate way.
Comment from vakantieland dot nl on 23 August 2018 at 13:02
Most cycleways in The Netherlands are made for bicycles of 75 centimeter wide. That is the reason why there are exceptions for wider (bi)cycles. Dutch traffic regulations (law) have exceptions for 75+ cm wide bicycles (lugage counts too for the width), these wide bikes have no obligation to use the mandatory cycle way (as long as there is no prohibition).
Comment from gileri on 3 September 2018 at 20:45
Thank you I understand now !