How do I create a Scenic Route?

Question

By scenic route, I mean a DRIVING Scenic Route as designated by signs, for example, a Virginia Byway, or something like the Lariat Loop in Colorado. I can't find any way at this time to designate such in OSM, which is kind of surprising.

Answer 1

At the risk of duplicating information in existing answers, here's my take.

The major hint is in the name Scenic Route, which suggests consulting route on the wiki, also the relevant wikipedia page is useful.

I generally use a similar approach to that of he_the_great, but look for a well-known feature which is similar on OpenStreetMap. The candidates I chose for a scenic route were : the Romantic Road, the German Alpine Road, and the Blue Ridge Parkway. In France there are many Routes du Vin, but I'm not so familiar with them, whereas I have driven on my three main candidates.

The Romantic Road is mapped with a relation route=road and tourism=yes tags.
The Alpine road does not appear to be mapped.
Blue Ridge Parkway and Skyline Drive are mapped but not using a relation because they were actually built and named as single entities. Route relations would enable all the separate ways sharing the name to be accessed together and information such as their membership of the National Park System to be noted.

Searching the OSM Wiki for Romantische Strasse links to a page on Tourist Routes (Ferienstrasse) for Germany. This contains a list of such routes, how much of a route has been mapped, and advice on mapping such routes including recommended tags. (It is always a good idea to check if something has been mapped in Germany because of the larger size of the mapping community).

There is another type of scenic road, notably indicated on Michelin maps, but this depends entirely on subjective judgement and is therefore not suitable for mapping on OSM. This is a good job as many sections of so-called scenic routes are in my, subjective, opinion not very scenic.

So in summary. Start looking for something specific which is similar to what you want to map either using a search engine or directly on OSM. Once you find something you are likely to discover that someone else has already mapped something, and that there may be a reasonable amount of documentation. Don't believe people who talk about the 'powers that be', as they clearly are poorly informed.

Answer 2

My general approach for find how to tag something has been to google: osm [thing I want to do]

In this case: osm scenic route

I've found a page on key:scenic which appears to be what you want. I also found a mapping of Northern Scenic Route. You likely can use the tag on relations if the route travels several roads.

However I don't know of software that could show such routes.

Answer 3

You could have a look at Kurviger which generates scenic motorcycle routes, which can be also used by car. Kurviger avoids cities and highways, while preferring curves and slopes, which will result in a pretty scenic drive. More information can be found in the OSM Wiki.

How do I create a Scenic Route?

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