[Tagging] Proposed definition for cycleways

[Nick Austin]

On Tue, Jan 5, 2010 at 11:53 PM, Steve Bennett <stevagewp at gmail.com> wrote:
> I'll restate it: every way or path *especially* suitable. More suitable than
> average. Much more suitable than average, if you like.
>
> Anyway, I'm obviously not getting my message across, so I'm going to have to
> think about how to express it more clearly. I'm not trying to turn OSM into
> a bike project - I'm actually just trying to work out a definition of
> cycleway that people can agree on and that is useful.

The way I see it is that highway=cycleway and highway=bridleway are
legacies from before OSM had access tags (foot=, bicycle-, horse=
etc.).  The original meaning for cycleway and bridleway have
disappeared so now cycleway, bridleway and footway are synonyms with
slightly different defaults for the access tags..

Just to be clear, highway=cycleway is shorthand for highway=footway +
bicycle=yes and highway=bridleway is shorthand for highway=footway +
horse=yes.  There's no need for this "definition creep" nonsense.

BTW, footway is a bad name.  If OSM was starting over it I'd suggest
that it should be highway=narrowway or similar, used for all ways that
are narrower than a track.

Nick.