Cycling against traffic #2

The other day I posted something about cycling against traffic which, it has been claimed, is allowed on 85% of oneway streets in Brussels. I tried to find out the percentage for Amsterdam using Open Street Map, but found that the relevant information is often missing. Or so I thought.

I posted a question on the OSM forum (here and here) and got various helpful answers. Basically, I shouldn’t have looked just for oneway:bicycle=no tags, but also for cycleway=opposite (and perhaps a few more). I was also directed to a web page where cycling tags can be shown on a map.

So does Amsterdam allow cycling against traffic on anyway near the 85% of oneway streets reported for Brussels, if you include the cycleway=opposite tags? Well, no. Then again, looking at a similar map of Brussels, it doesn’t really look like they do any better. Of course, one shouldn’t jump to conclusions:

• It depends on the part of the city you look at. In Amsterdam, cycling against traffic is more often allowed in the city centre and some other parts like Oost; in Brussels is appears to be more spread out over the city,
• Perhaps local Open Street Map contributors have different mapping habits.

That said, I was getting curious as to the basis for the 85% claim for Brussels. I found a report from 2010 published by cyclists’ organisation Gracq, which said that 75% of oneway streets in Brussels had sens unique limité (which is apparently a legal requirement on suitable oneway streets). Gracq had contacted local governments by telephone to collect the data.