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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">
<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=UTF-8">
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>
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