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<p>Hi everyone,<br>
<br>
Sorry to send a second email just after my first, but while doing
some more research, I found that this controversy is already
pretty old; see:<br>
</p>
<p><a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="https://www.openstreetmap.org/user/Richard/diary/20333">https://www.openstreetmap.org/user/Richard/diary/20333</a></p>
<p>and <br>
</p>
<p><a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Path_controversy">https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Path_controversy</a><br>
<br>
Kind regards,<br>
Pieter<br>
</p>
<div class="moz-cite-prefix">On 18.02.21 12:34, Pieter Vander Vennet
wrote:<br>
</div>
<blockquote type="cite"
cite="mid:e1a08e87-41f2-4d92-8d59-2f4d173ca4f8@posteo.net">
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<p>Hi Matthieu,</p>
<p>Welcome in the swampy fields of tagging discussions ;)<br>
<br>
<b>My view</b><br>
</p>
<p>First of all, we do professional routeplanning, for both
cyclists and pedestrians. And yes, I do (mostly) agree with your
view: a path is a small, unpaved (desire) path, e.g. through a
forest whereas a footway is IMHO a typical paved (or planned)
road of at least 0.5m wide. A rule of thumb that I use is that a
wheelchair/stroller could pass easily, or as Gerard said
earlier: "it is like a sidewalk, but just not next to a road"<br>
</p>
<p>If the "footway" is sufficiently wide that a car <i>could</i>
drive over it (but is not allowed to), I'm inclined to mark them
as <i>highway=pedestrian</i>. This is useful information, as
e.g. emergency services might take it during an intervention to
get close to the location of the accident.</p>
<p>I'm also inclined to mark a wide, planned way (e.g. in parks)
as footways too.<br>
<br>
I try to base my road classification mostly on physical aspects:
a path stays a path, even if it suddenly has a name board. This
is because of my view from routeplanning: in general, I assume
that that a footway is accessible to a wheelchair user, whereas
a path is not. To explicitly add the vicinal road status, there
are some tags for that (vicinal_road:ref IIRC?). This is the
only place where I disagree with you:<br>
</p>
<div class="">> The only exception I see is a path in the
country side that is explicitly marked (road signs) as
pedestrian only, and/or has turnstiles or other gates to keep
other users away.</div>
<div class=""><br>
</div>
<div class="">I would still mark those as a `highway=path`, with
an additional `bicycle=no` and map the turnstiles/kissing gates
explicitly. The data consumer can then decide what to do.</div>
<div class=""><br>
</div>
<div class="">Note however that not everyone agrees with my vision
and that I'm not always consistent too - I mapped a <a
moz-do-not-send="true"
href="https://www.openstreetmap.org/way/107877794">very
peculiar case</a> yesterday that by my objective criteria
should be a 'path', but that I mapped as footways due to their
context as that felt more appropriate - but<a
moz-do-not-send="true"
href="https://www.openstreetmap.org/way/126568080"> that place</a>
has given me more tagging questions too...<br>
<br>
At last, some people say that "a footway needs a traffic sign to
be a footway" or "a cycle path needs a traffic sign to be a
cyclepath". That is a view I vehemently reject - not every
qualitive footway has a traffic sign nor has every traffic sign
a qualitative footway - although a traffic sign can help in
making these decisions.<br>
<br>
Also abusing `highway=path` for shared infrastructure
cycle/pedestrian infrastructure is something I loathe: it erases
a lot of information and is an effective downgrade of the
relevant ways from a routeplanning perspective, as we have to
assume the way is a desire path (small, unpaved); not accessible
to e.g. wheelchairs, strollers and rollerskate, instead of the
very accessible nicely paved, wide footway. To be able to
replicate all the information for this downgrade, we would need
`surface=*`, `width=*`, `smoothness=*` and maybe even
`wheelchair=*` to be sure it is a highly qualitative footway and
quite a bit of tricky and inexact preprocessing. However, I do
not have a perfect solution for the shared footways/cycleways as
well - but marking as path is definitively worse.<br>
So, Marc_marc: I'm sorry, but I do not agree with you and some
of the wiki definitions! But that is fine - a disagreement is
often due to a different perspective or some missing
information. And OSM won't fail over a bit of disagreement ;)<br>
</div>
<p> <br>
<b>Some history</b></p>
<p>Apart from my vision, it is also important to know that
OpenStreetMap started in the UK, where there are plenty of
vicinal roads. I think those where historically mapped as
highway=footway too, but I'm not sure of that. Furthermore, as
Gerard nicely stated earlier, it is a common translation error.<br>
</p>
<p>Furhtermore, the iD editor used to "upgrade" tags: a
`highway=footway + bicycle=yes` and `highway=cycleway +
foot=yes` got upgraded to `highway=path; bicycle=yes;
foot=yes`. As the iD editor is widely used, there are quite
some footways downgraded now...<br>
</p>
<p>Kind regards,<br>
Pieter<br>
</p>
<div class="moz-cite-prefix">On 18.02.21 10:27, Matthieu Gaillet
wrote:<br>
</div>
<blockquote type="cite"
cite="mid:308670D7-1550-4E81-A0CB-BD711870AA29@gaillet.be">
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Hi,
<div class=""><br class="">
</div>
<div class="">I would like to know if there is some kind of
consensus in Belgium regarding the use of <footway> and
<path> tags.</div>
<div class=""><br class="">
</div>
<div class="">My intuitive interpretation in the following : </div>
<div class="">
<ul class="">
<li class="">a footway, generally speaking, is anything that
is specifically created for pedestrians in urbanised
areas.</li>
<li class="">a path, is generally speaking anything that is
not a track (thus not for 4 wheeled vehicles) and not (as
well) paved like a footway.</li>
</ul>
</div>
<div class="">I know there are other much more loose
interpretations that say that a footway might be a non-paved
path, but my question is : why would one tag them differently
than others ? After all, a path is not suitable for anything
else than pedestrian use (except sometimes bikes) ? On the
contrary, footways in urbanised places *are* special and it
makes sense to map them differently.</div>
<div class=""><br class="">
</div>
<div class="">I observe that some mappers are using the footway
tags for paths in forests or fields in the middle of nowhere.
Those are often “sentiers communaux” (public paths) mapped by
balnam affiliates. Its driving me nuts 😊 </div>
<div class=""> </div>
<div class="">- most of the time this difference in the way
those paths are mapped doesn’t reflect any physical nor
practical reality on the field. </div>
<div class="">- this creates vagueness and looseness, I see
“normal” paths suddenly showed as “special” on maps without
any clear reason. </div>
<div class="">- some could argument that the path tag is not
detailed enough. That’s not true : it can be (and is) combined
with a lot of other tags to qualify it from multiple point of
views and renderers are already taking care of them. This is
*not* the case of the footway which is (logically) kind of
monolithic.</div>
<div class=""><br class="">
</div>
<div class="">The only exception I see is a path in the country
side that is explicitly marked (road signs) as pedestrian
only, and/or has turnstiles or other gates to keep other users
away.</div>
<div class=""><br class="">
</div>
<div class="">Do you generally agree with my way of seeing
things ? Is it at least the general way of doing things in
Belgium ? Thanks for sharing your thoughts.</div>
<div class=""><br class="">
</div>
<div class=""><br class="">
</div>
<div class="">
<div class="">
<div>Matthieu</div>
</div>
<br class="">
</div>
<br>
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</blockquote>
<pre class="moz-signature" cols="72">--
Met vriendelijke groeten,
Pieter Vander Vennet</pre>
</blockquote>
<pre class="moz-signature" cols="72">--
Met vriendelijke groeten,
Pieter Vander Vennet</pre>
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