The Commons Data Catalog¶

Everything a rider can contribute to the open cycling Commons: climbs, water, stays, hazards, viewpoints, and more. All of it is community-contributed, useful to anyone, and non-personal (about the world, never a person's identity). Never scraped; contributed by riders as reports, edits, and aggregate, anonymous signals.

Principles¶

Build on OSM, don't reinvent it. Items tagged [OSM] already have a home in OpenStreetMap (ODbL). Sync with / contribute back to OSM for those; layer cycling-specific curation on top. the Commons's added value is curation, normalization, freshness, and the cycling lens, not re-collecting the base map.
Non-personal only. The dataset carries no identity and nothing about a person: the Commons is the map, not the rider. That is a statement about this catalogue, not about the whole service. An account holds ordinary account data, and analytics and server logs see an IP address; the privacy policy is the authoritative account of both.
Every body rides (Manifesto §II). The facts an adapted bike, a handbike, a cargo bike or a rider who needs a calm, legible road depends on are data, not an afterthought: the clearance width of a barrier, the traffic a road carries, how many decisions a route asks per kilometre, whether it follows signed routes. They are collected under A and derived under R.
Media is a first-class, consent-gated contribution. Photos and video join the Commons under CC BY-SA 4.0 with provenance: the contributor explicitly confirms they own it and donate it (first-time consent), or links a photo from a recognised source whose licence is validated. Never scraped. Always a real capture: nothing generated or composed by AI or any other artificial means, and nothing added to or removed from the scene, with one exclusion: faces and number plates are blurred before upload. Light editing is fine, with AI tools or without: colour toning, cropping, sharpening, noise removal.
Providers are partners, on their licence. A scheme or register that publishes under an open licence enters as its own rows, cited as theirs, the way the RIVM drinking-water register does ([provider]). One that is closed is signposted, a link out and no copy, until it agrees. What riders add on top of a provider's row is offered back to the provider where they can take it.

Contribution methods (legend)¶

[auto]: derived automatically from aggregate, anonymous signals (a road exists, is rideable, is popular)
[tap]: a one-tap answer on a pin that is already on the map, from its drawer: still here?, drinkable? on water, I rode this on a route. A tap never adds a point
[edit]: entered or changed through the one improve form per category: a pin placed on the map, then that category's fields. Every new point arrives this way, and a curator approves it before it shows
[safety]: dynamic/perishable; needs freshness, expiry, and confirm/decay
[OSM]: overlaps OpenStreetMap; sync rather than duplicate
[provider]: imported from an open data provider of record, named in the provider registry and attributed on every row it gave (source authority). For example: the RIVM drinking-water register in the Netherlands, Tourisme Wallonie PIVOT for stays in Belgium
[review]: a rider's own words on any place or route: a short dated note under their display name, several per item, shown in the drawer beside the facts and moderated like everything else. Today every form has one note for riders field, which is an attribute of the item, not a voice: the last edit overwrites it (design, not built)
[media]: photo/video, CC BY-SA 4.0, consent-gated (own-it-and-donate, or licence-validated link). For example: three photos of a col and a short clip of the descent, shown on the item as a slideshow

Letters are stable identifiers, not an order: practical categories take A-M, experiential (votable) categories take N-Z, and the ride heatmap is a derived layer with no letter. A rider never sees a letter: wherever the site names a category it shows the category's icon and name, on the map's layer list, the drawer, search results and the contribution forms alike. The letters live in ?type=, the coverage tiles, coverage_poi.letter and the public API, and on this page, where they name a section.

A. Road surface & base map (the base), mostly [OSM]¶

Area / region / municipality boundaries [OSM]
Road & path geometry and names [auto][OSM]
Cycleways, bike lanes, segregated paths, gravel/MTB trails [OSM]
Surface type: asphalt / concrete / paving / cobbles / gravel / dirt / sand [tap][edit][OSM]
Surface smoothness / quality [tap][edit][OSM]
Path width [OSM] (not harvested; OSM has it on few paths. Useful if it comes, not for now)
Barriers on the way, chicanes (single, double, triple, squeeze), A-frames, kissing gates, bollards and blocks, with the type and the clearance width in centimetres. The width is the fact, the type is the hint: a double chicane at 150 cm passes a trailer, one at 90 cm stops a handbike. OpenStreetMap has the model (barrier=cycle_barrier + cycle_barrier=*, barrier=bollard|kissing_gate|gate|swing_gate|block, maxwidth:physical, opening, spacing, bicycle=*, wheelchair=*) and, for most bollards, no width; a rider measures where OSM is silent, in centimetres against a known reference (road bars about 42 cm, a cargo bike about 65 cm, a trailer about 80 cm). Harvested only from cycleways, paths and tracks, never from car roads, or every bollard in Europe lands on the map [tap][edit][OSM] (harvest and form: design, not built)
Traffic exposure: derived from road class, speed limit, lanes and cycleway, and quietness as Scout detects it from rides; the input for a route's sensory load [auto][OSM] (being built). Riders are asked too, and today as one voice: the road form has a traffic field (quiet · moderate · busy · car-free) and the route form a quietness rating. What is not built is the tally, ten say quiet and two say moderate, with the time of day attached: a road is quiet at seven and not at five [edit]
Lit / unlit at night [OSM]
One-way / cycling-permitted-against-traffic [OSM] (on the roadmap, not built)
Signed cycle routes & node networks: the signed routes and numbered junction networks riders navigate by, drawn from OpenStreetMap's route relations. The corridors and numbers are OSM's. Ours is the surface along them: OSM's tag where it exists, a rider's answer where someone has said, nothing where nobody has, and a one-tap way to fill the gaps [tap][edit][OSM]

B. Water & food (ride-critical)¶

Drinking water / refill points: fountains, taps, cemeteries, churches [tap][edit][OSM][provider]
Potability is stated, never assumed. The map says what it knows about each water point and marks what it does not. The rule has two parts:
- What the OpenStreetMap tags say sets the baseline, in three states: drinking_water=yes, or amenity=drinking_water with nothing said against it, is a drinking tap; drinking_water=no is not for drinking; a water point carrying neither is unknown. The coverage tiles carry this tri-state per point (pipeline/coverage/tiles.py).
- A public register of record can vouch for a point where one exists. In the Netherlands the RIVM drinking-water register is imported as its own rows under letter B, named in the record panel and shown as official register until a rider confirms it on the spot. The registry of providers is described in How data earns its place.
- A rider's one-tap drinkable? answer on the drawer proposes a correction; a curator decides, and the symbol changes once it is accepted.

The symbol grammar is shipped. The map's Key panel and /map-key are the reference:

State	Map symbol	Source of truth
Drinking tap	a blue drop	mapped as drinking water and nothing says otherwise; confirm on the spot
Not for drinking	a drop with a red bar across it	tagged not drinkable, or a rider said so
Tap, nothing said	an unfilled drop	a water point nobody has said anything about; treat it as unknown

Every icon is drawn SVG (ItemType::svgPath() and the KindIcons registry), never an emoji, so it renders the same in every browser and can carry the badges. The shape says which store the record lives in: a small disc or drop is imported baseline data, a teardrop pin is a record this community keeps. A "?" badge at the top right means no rider has confirmed it yet. Natural mineral springs (the Spa pouhons, for one) are labelled as such: potable, but not utility tap water. - Public toilets: their own category, C (next); listed here too because a rider looking for water and a rider looking for a toilet are usually the same rider, and the map shows C right after this group [tap][OSM] - Cyclist-friendly cafés / coffee stops [tap][edit] - Resupply: shops, supermarkets, bakeries (+ opening hours) [tap][edit][OSM] - Notable on-route food stops [tap][edit]

C. Public toilets (mapped, but rarely with hours, fee or access)¶

Public toilets: municipal blocks, station and park facilities, serviced stops [tap][edit][OSM]
Free or paid · accessible · opening hours, where they are known [edit][OSM]

Its own letter rather than a line inside B because it answers a different question at a different moment, and folding it into "Water & food" made it unfindable - a rider looking for a toilet does not think of it as food. It sits at C, straight after Water & food, which is also where the map displays it.

Sourced from OSM today. Municipal toilet datasets that publish openly, and there are dozens, can enter as [provider] rows the way the RIVM taps do, one adapter per city rather than a decision per city (not built). HogeNood, the Dutch specialist directory, is closed and partner-only, so it is a link out and no copy until it agrees; the British toilet map has no clear licence, so it is asked first.

D. Bike services¶

Bike shops (+ hours, brands serviced) [tap][edit][OSM]
Public repair stations / pumps / tool stands [tap][edit][OSM]
Emergency / mobile mechanics: a service that comes to you, not a place on a map; whether it belongs here at all is undecided (not built)
E-bike charging points: design. The harvest takes three kinds from OpenStreetMap, bike shops, repair stations and pumps (shop=bicycle, amenity=bicycle_repair_station, amenity=compressed_air); no charging kind is harvested.

E. Hazards & conditions (dynamic, needs freshness)¶

A hazard is what a rider at speed cannot see in time: a pothole in the shade of a descent, a road that is closed round the corner, ice on a north-facing bend. It is a point a rider can stand at, that will not be there for ever, that another rider can check, and that names no person. What a rider can plainly see, tram tracks, a cattle grid, cobbles, is not a hazard and is not recorded as one. The Commons serves long rides, and a route that warns of fifty places warns of none; the list below is deliberately short and stays short (owner 2026-09-09).

The point of a hazard is to be known before the ride. The ride check does that today: upload a GPX and every hazard on file along the line comes back in riding order, with the rest of what the corridor holds; the file is read and discarded, nothing is stored. The same for a route drawn in the Commons, rather than uploaded, is not built yet.

Road-surface problems: potholes, broken surface, ice, and gravel or sand washed onto a paved bend, the common trigger on a descent [tap][edit][safety]
Seasonal closures: cols under snow, flood-prone dips, snow gates; the closure lifetime and its expiry are built for these [tap][edit][safety][OSM]
Construction / temporary closures / diversions, with the detour [tap][edit][safety]
One spot a rider can pin: a bend where you cannot see what is coming, or a busy road you must cross in one go with no island in the middle. The form calls these bad corner and junction / crossing, never dangerous: one rider's fright is not a fact [tap][edit][safety]
Crosswind / fog on an exposed stretch: real on a dam or a col; a stretch, not a pin, so it reads as a quality of the road [tap][edit]

F. Getting there & multimodal¶

Train stations with bike access; bikes-on-train rules [tap][edit][OSM]
Ferries cyclists can use (+ bikes-allowed, rough schedule) [tap][edit][OSM]
Tunnels & bridges a cyclist may use, or must avoid [tap][edit][OSM]
Bike-share / rental stations [OSM]
Park-and-ride / trailheads / good ride-start parking [tap][edit][OSM]

G. Shelter & emergency¶

Rain shelters / covered spots / bus stops to wait out weather [tap][edit][OSM]
Hospitals, pharmacies, first aid [OSM]
Mountain refuges / huts / emergency phones [OSM]

N. Climbs, descents & terrain (the layer closed databases lock down)¶

Climbs / cols / bergs: start & top points, length, elevation gain [auto][tap][edit]
Average gradient, max gradient, full gradient profile [auto]
Climb surface & whether it's paved/gravel [edit]
Difficulty category (HC/1–4) [auto]
Named climbs & famous segments [edit]
Descents: technicality, hairpin count, surface [edit]. Gravel or sand on a paved bend is not a note on the climb: it is a hazard pinned on that bend under E, so the ride check can warn about it [safety]
Per-area relief: one number per region for how hilly it is, metres climbed per kilometre ridden, from the same elevation source the climbs use. It belongs at the top of the region page, which today counts area, items and routes and says nothing about the riding; the region portrait that would carry it is on the roadmap (not built) [auto]

O. Where to sleep¶

Bike-friendly accommodation riders have actually used: B&B, hotel, hostel, campsite [tap][edit][OSM][provider]
Secure bike storage at a stay [edit]
Bivouac / shelter / wild-camp spots (where legal) [tap][edit]
Cyclist-accommodation schemes, the same way as the RIVM taps (owner 2026-09-09): a scheme that publishes openly, Accueil Vélo in France under Licence Ouverte, enters as [provider] rows, each cited as the scheme's and updated by the harvest; a closed scheme, Bett+Bike in Germany or Vrienden op de Fiets in the Netherlands, is a signpost, a link out and no copy, until it agrees. On top of a provider's row riders add what the scheme does not hold: still here? and I stayed here confirmations, photos, a written note, and a rating once the vote ships. Where the scheme can take it, that is offered back to them under its licence, the same shape as the OSM give-back below (open schemes: design, not built; closed schemes: ask first) [provider][tap][edit][media]

P. Scenic views (the photo-stop layer)¶

Viewpoints / panoramas [tap][edit][OSM][media]
Photo spots: where the shot is [tap][edit][media]
Best light / time of day [edit]

Q. History & culture (the story layer: stories about the region or its cities)¶

Landmarks & points of interest to ride past [tap][edit][OSM]
Local stories & history (community text) [edit]
Municipality facts / public-domain coats of arms [edit]
Cycling-heritage sites: famous finish lines, velodromes, monuments [tap][edit]

R. Recommended routes (rides riders vouch for)¶

A route a rider proposes: a drawn or GPX-uploaded line, with its distance and climbing measured [edit]
Start point, loop or point-to-point, difficulty, the season it is best ridden in [edit]
I rode this confirmations from other riders, which are what verify a route [tap]
A photo of the ride [media]
What lies along the route, shown on the route itself without asking: the ride check run over the stored line, so a recommended route opens with its water, coffee stops, toilets, shelters, hazards and surface changes in riding order. The corridor query exists for uploaded files; pointing it at a stored route is the missing step (not built) [auto]
What the route asks of a body, derived along the line from A and the geometry we already measure (design, not built): the narrowest passage in centimetres and where it is; turn density, decisions per kilometre; the share of the line on signed routes, from OSM route relations; traffic exposure per kilometre, worst stretch named. Predictability, legibility and sensory load are stable qualities of a route, not hazards that perish, which is why they are here and not under E [auto]
Whether a road is quiet is detected first, not asked: Scout, the ride-file tool, derives it from the ride itself, and the answer lands on the road under A as an aggregate fact, no trace kept (being built) [auto]
Categories a route can carry, chosen by the proposer and confirmed by the vote: cultural, architecture, scenic, quiet, and the like; a rider filters the region's best by the kind of ride they want (not built) [edit][tap]

R is a route layer, not a per-road rating. What a road is like (quietness, smoothness, surface, lit or not, seasonal closure) is recorded on the road itself, under A. Best-of rankings of routes are derived from riders, never hand-picked: ride confirmations today, and the season ballot once voting is live, see Curation & voting.

Ride heatmap, derived & aggregate (auto, anonymized, never per-rider)¶

What renders today: the map's heat layer draws from heat_point, which the catalog importer seeds from a committed demo file. Nothing is ingested from rider uploads; the engine below is design, and the list here is what it is meant to produce.

Road popularity / "is this actually used" heatmap (aggregate) [auto]
Rideability inference: e.g. is this gravel OK on a road bike (from aggregate use) [auto]
Under-explored areas (shows where the map is thin) [auto]
Coverage & freshness per area [auto]
Seasonal route shift: how the popular lines move spring → summer → autumn → winter [auto]

Optional engine: a seasonal ride-heatmap (design, not built)¶

Riders can upload their rides; the Commons keeps the lines, never the riders. The heatmap is the real engine behind road-popularity (and could suggest popular loops), and stays manifesto-safe only if anonymization happens at ingest, not in storage:

Map-match then discard. On upload, snap the trace to OSM road segments, increment per-segment counters, and throw the raw trace away. Never store a per-rider polyline.
Privacy zones. Drop the first/last ~200 m of every trace (kills home/work fingerprints).
k-anonymity. Publish a segment's popularity only once ≥ N distinct riders have used it.
Coarse seasonal buckets. Per-segment counts per season, enough to see routes shift across the year, with no per-ride timeline that could re-identify anyone.
Seed from open data. OSM's public GPS traces are already openly contributed, so the heatmap can start from those before any first-party uploads exist.

Result: a purely aggregate layer, publishable openly (ODbL), holding the map, not the rider (Manifesto §I). This is the measured side of routes; the rider-verified side is R: I rode this confirmations on the map drawer, and the season ballot once voting is live.

Notes for product / schema¶

Most of A–G, N and O, and parts of P, have OSM tags already, so design the Commons to interoperate with OSM (import + contribute back under ODbL), so you inherit a huge head start and avoid duplicating the base map.
[safety] items need a freshness model: timestamp, confirmations, and decay/expiry, or the map rots.
The Commons's defensible curation: climbs (N), bike-friendly stays riders vouch for (O), quality rides / cyclist-experience attributes (R), and live conditions reported by riders (E): the layers OSM is thin on and that closed, single-app data leaves out.

Freshness model (for the [safety] / dynamic layers)¶

A "road closed" or "pothole" report that never expires becomes a lie. Perishable items need a lifecycle, or the map rots.

What runs today is narrower than the model below, and the difference is marked per item. A hazard reported as Road closed carries the reporter's own answer to "closed for how long?" and stops being shown once that window passes, unless somebody confirms it is still shut (app:catalog:expire-closures). Nothing else auto-expires: a hazard with no stated end date needs a human to clear it. The one-tap confirm is built for every place.

Scout, the ride-file tool, is a partial provider of freshness, at both ends of a report's life. Adding: a rider who meets a closed road drops a tag on the device at the spot, with a word on it; at home, in the Scout review, that tag becomes a hazard report of type Road closed with the closure window filled in, and from then on it expires by itself. The moment and the place come from the ride, so the report carries the timestamp the model asks for without anyone typing it. Clearing (design): rides that keep passing through a spot flagged closed are the aggregate evidence the auto-clear rule below needs, with no trace of any one ride kept.

Timestamp + reporter count on every report: when, and how many independent riders.
Confidence from confirmations. 1 report = unconfirmed; several independent ones = confirmed. Show the state, don't hide it.
Decay / expiry by type (design). Each hazard has a half-life: a pothole persists for months, "closed for an event" expires in days, "loose gravel" fades over weeks. After expiry it's hidden (not deleted) pending re-confirmation. Only the closure window exists today.
Auto-clear from aggregate use (design). If riders keep passing through a spot flagged "closed," that's evidence it reopened: [auto] data downgrades a stale [tap] report.
One-tap confirm / dispute. A rider passing a flagged spot gets a light "still there? yes / gone" prompt that feeds confidence. Built for every place, not only hazards: the drawer asks the letter's own question, drinkable? for water, still here? for the rest, and offers the three ways a place stops being true beside it: out of order, closed, not there anymore. Out of order is offered only where something can break; a viewpoint cannot. Each writes the same field the edit form offers, so a one-tap answer and a typed correction are one record rather than two, and each goes through the ordinary review queue: a tap proposes, a curator decides. A place confirmed gone leaves the map and does not reappear from the OpenStreetMap layer underneath it.
Provenance kept, identity not. Store that N riders confirmed and when, never who, in the public Commons.

This turns perishable reports into a self-healing layer instead of an ever-growing pile of stale warnings.

Access: the map is one view; the data is queryable¶

The Commons is open data, not a walled map. For now the map is the one way in that counts as fully active; the other two exist or are designed, and are named here so nobody mistakes the map for the product: - Map: /map, with toggleable layers. Fully active. - Query API: /v1/search, filtered by type + bounding box, like OSM Overpass: "all drinking-water points in this bbox," "climbs in this bbox." A bbox is required and capped in size. Live in an early, two-endpoint form; country and region as API filters are design, not built. - Bulk export (design, not built): per-country / per-region open dumps for anyone to download and build on (ODbL).

The intent is that "per country" is a first-class query, not a map-only view: that is what makes it a commons rather than a feature.

Sub-items & attributes: what a contributor actually fills in¶

The catalog above is the categories. This is the depth under each one, in three lines per letter, checked against the improve forms (CatalogFormRegistry, 2026-09-09). Form is what the form asks today, in its own words; OSM is what the base map already carries; Design is named and not built. Most forms also ask still as mapped? (as mapped · out of order · closed · not there anymore); that is the freshness question and is not repeated below.

A. Map & surface, per road or stretch¶

Form:
surface (asphalt · concrete · paving stones · sett / pavé · compacted · fine gravel · gravel · dirt · rock)
road type (main road · local road · residential street · farm or forest track · path or trail · cycleway)
smoothness (excellent → very bad)
traffic (quiet · moderate · busy · car-free), one answer per edit
segregated from cars?
lit at night?
seasonal closure (none · winter · forestry work)
width in metres
a note
OSM: road type, surface, smoothness, width, lit, one-way and contraflow
Design: barriers, the type (chicane single / double / triple / squeeze · A-frame · kissing gate · bollard · block) and the clearance width in cm with its source (OSM maxwidth:physical / opening / spacing, or measured by a rider) · traffic exposure, derived · the traffic tally with the hour attached, so that ten quiet and two moderate replaces one voice

B. Water & food, per point¶

Form:
type (public fountain · drinking tap · cemetery tap · café refill point)
potable? (yes, public supply · unsigned, use judgement · no)
seasonal (year-round · summer only · frost-shut in winter)
availability (always · daytime only · ask or behind a gate)
bottle-fill friendly?
cost (free · customers only)
website
a note for riders
OSM / provider: amenity=drinking_water and drinking_water=*, bakeries, shops and cafés with their hours; the RIVM register's own rows in the Netherlands
Design: what a café or shop is like for a rider (weekly closing day · indoor bike parking · outdoor seating · card or cash · open on Sunday? · what they stock); today a café enters only as a refill point.

C. Public toilets, per point¶

Form:
fee (free · paid)
wheelchair accessible?
opening hours
baby changing table?
shower?
website
a note for riders
OSM: amenity=toilets, with fee, wheelchair and hours where somebody mapped them

D. Bike services, per point¶

Form:
type (bike shop · repair stand · pump)
pump valve (presta + schrader · presta only · schrader only · no pump)
opening hours (24/7 · see website · unknown)
tools available
work stand?
chain tool?
e-bike charging?
website
OSM: shop=bicycle, amenity=bicycle_repair_station, amenity=compressed_air; charging points are in OSM and not harvested (in the backlog)
Design: brands serviced · rental? · e-bike service? · a charging kind of its own, with connector and fee, instead of a yes/no on a shop

E. Hazards, per report¶

Form:
type (crosswind / fog · ice / frost · loose surface / gravel · potholes · junction / crossing · bad corner · flooding · roadworks · road closed · other)
if closed, for how long (today · days · weeks · months · unknown)
severity (low · moderate · high)
when is it worst (autumn / winter · year-round · after rain · windy days)
still present? (confirmed today · reduced · gone)
what did you see
a detour
time of day
Built around it: a closure expires itself when its window runs out; the ride check lists the hazards along an uploaded GPX in riding order
Design: decay by type for everything that is not a closure · direction affected

F. Getting there, per node¶

Form:
bikes on board (allowed, free · allowed with supplement · restricted at peak · not allowed)
step-free access?
bike parking at the station (covered racks · open racks · none)
lift or ramp?
bike ticket needed?
website
a note for riders
OSM: stations, ferry terminals, bike parking, bike-share docks
Design: ferries (schedule · season · cost · crossing time), tunnels and bridges (allowed? · shuttle? · alternative), ride-start parking and bike-share as kinds of their own; today everything enters through the one station-shaped form

G. Shelter, per point¶

Form:
shelter type (refuge / chapel · bus shelter · café, seasonal · picnic hut)
always accessible? (open structure · daytime only · seasonal)
water nearby?
bench?
phone signal?
website
a note on how useful it is in bad weather
OSM: amenity=shelter with shelter_type, huts
Design: staffed refuges (food · sleeping · open season) · medical (hospital · pharmacy · first aid) · SOS phones and rescue points; none of these are asked today

N. Climbs, per climb and side¶

Form:
name
approach (which side, from where)
surface (smooth asphalt · asphalt · worn asphalt · cobbles · gravel)
road quality (smooth → broken / loose)
traffic (traffic-free · quiet · moderate · busy)
effort (steady · challenging · tough · very steep)
water on the climb?
hairpins (count)
shade / exposure (wooded · partly shaded · exposed)
famous for
anything to correct
Measured, never typed: ascent · average gradient · steepest sustained gradient, from the elevation model, recomputed whenever the line changes; the gradient profile is drawn from the same source
OSM / Wikidata: the name and its alternates, the top point and its elevation
Design: difficulty category (HC / 1–4) · where it tops out · a segment reference · open season and snow gates · descent notes

O. Stays, per place¶

Form:
name
town
website
secure bike storage (locked room · garage or shed · on request · no)
drying / washing for kit?
booking link
pets?
meals or breakfast?
tools to borrow?
accessibility (step-free · handbike-friendly · wheelchair-accessible)
a note on what makes it good for cyclists
OSM / provider: the type (tourism=hotel · guest_house · hostel · camp_site · alpine_hut); a scheme's own rows where it publishes openly
Design: price band · open season · minimum nights · a rating once the vote ships

P. Scenic views, per POI¶

Form:
name
type (viewpoint / high point · natural feature)
access for bikes (roadside · short walk · path only)
what can you see
best light (morning · golden hour · sunset · any)
bench?
official site
other pages about this place
a description
OSM / media: tourism=viewpoint; photos under CC BY-SA, a rider's own or from Wikimedia Commons with the licence checked
Design: photo spots as a kind of their own, with the best angle

Q. History & culture, per POI¶

Form:
name
type (heritage site · museum / culture · monument · religious site · architecture)
bike parking?
opening hours
entry fee?
cycling story
official site
other pages about this place
a description
OSM / Wikidata: the place, its class and coordinates; Wikimedia Commons photos with the licence checked
Design: era · local stories as community text with a source · municipality facts and public-domain coats of arms · velodromes and famous finish lines as kinds of their own

R. Recommended routes, per route¶

Form:
ride name
the line (drawn or GPX)
difficulty (easy · moderate · challenging · hard · very hard)
best season (spring · summer · autumn · winter)
dominant surface
quietness (1–5)
scenic (1–5)
cycling-friendliness (1–5)
suitable bike types (road · gravel · MTB · e-bike · handbike · recumbent · trike · tandem)
gradient-limited? (no · ≤6% · ≤9%)
best direction
a note
Measured or counted, never typed: distance · climbing · elevation profile · who proposed it · I rode this count · state (unverified → verified) · a photo
Design: categories (cultural · architecture · scenic · quiet · …) · what lies along the line in riding order · the narrowest passage · turns per km · share on signed routes · traffic exposure per km · quiet stretches as Scout detects them. Road qualities live on the road under A; a route only sums them up

Derived & aggregate: computed, not entered (all [auto])¶

Road popularity score · rideability inference (is this gravel OK on a road bike?) · under-explored areas · per-area coverage % and data freshness · confidence/age of each [safety] item. These are outputs of the Commons, not things a person fills in, but they're published openly too.

Design note: keep every field optional and additive: a rider adds one fact (a water tap, a gradient, a "closed" flag) and everything else can stay blank. Adding takes a form; confirming an existing entry does not. The map grows from many small contributions, OSM-style. Required fields kill contribution; optional fields let the Commons grow one tap at a time.

Giving back to OpenStreetMap (Phase 2 feature)¶

Today the website uses OSM tiles (consumes OSM). "Gives back to" is a committed intention, not yet built. The data is ODbL, the same licence OSM uses, so facts can flow back legally by construction. That is one of six buckets the project keeps apart, and it is the only one that can travel to OSM at all:

What	Licence
Data: this catalog, places, climbs, routes, attributes	ODbL 1.0
Media: photos and video	CC BY-SA 4.0
Code and interface: the application, the pipeline, the tooling	AGPL-3.0-only
UI translations submitted through the site	AGPL-3.0-only, the same as the interface they are part of
Wiki prose, this page included	CC BY-SA 4.0
The name, the logo and the wordmark	reserved, not open: see TRADEMARK.md

Media travels under a creative-works licence, and photographs do not belong in OSM anyway. The code licence governs the platform, not the catalog, and has no bearing on either direction the data moves. The flow, lightest to heaviest:

Rider hand-off (being designed). When a rider adds a fact OSM is missing (water tap, repair station, wrong surface), the intention is to offer to carry it over, posted as their own OSM edit, never as a bulk feed from a project account, which is the kind of contribution OSM reverts and remembers. What that offer says, and what it sends, is deliberately not settled yet: a give-back is only worth building once it is well-formed at the other end.

Three things have to be answered first, and they are the whole difficulty:
1. Which fields even map. surface and smoothness translate directly. Our traffic field does not exist in OSM at all, and a rider's note maps to nothing. Posting our vocabulary into OSM tags would be worse than posting nothing.
2. Whose edit it is. OSM attributes an edit to an account, so it has to be the rider's, with their consent, in their words.
3. What comes back. Nothing automatic. OSM changes reach us through the ordinary refresh of our reference data, which is the only path that keeps provenance honest.
Prior art exists, RideWithGPS ships a contribute-to-OSM flow, and reading it carefully beats guessing at ours. - Curated submission. Curators review verified facts and submit them properly, with sources, human-in-the-loop. - Formal import (later, heavy). Bulk contribution needs an OSM import plan, community discussion, an ODbL-compatible source, and a dedicated account. The rules are strict, and bad imports get reverted. Not a day-one move.

Flows back → OSM: durable infrastructure facts (the [OSM]-tagged items: water, repair stations, bike shops, surface, cycleways, barriers). Stays in the Commons (not pushed to OSM): the experience layers apps build on top, subjective ratings (R), ephemeral [safety] hazards (OSM doesn't want "pothole reported yesterday"), and anything personal. OSM wants lasting facts, not the game or the weather.

Etiquette: follow OSM's Import & Automated-Edit guidelines, human-reviewed, attributed, never a firehose, or you get reverted and resented. Slow and clean beats fast and bulk.

Metric: track facts contributed back to OpenStreetMap by Commons contributors: it proves the give-back is real and makes a genuinely good community story.