[Tagging] "new" highway tag for small and informal footpaths; trail

M∡rtin Koppenhoefer dieterdreist at gmail.com
Fri Oct 22 17:11:10 BST 2010


It's now almost 3 years that I'm mapping and when I entered small
informal (not planned or built) footpaths I was using cryptic tag
combinations like highway=footway, informal=yes, width=0.3 (or
highway=path), surface=ground. While that is not impossible, it is
still somehow strange. Why shouldn't we simply add another highway
class on the lowest end? Would simplify all of our lives (at least for
all those who sometimes leave the car when mapping) and add some
clarity.

Looking at a dictionary I found "trail" (for german "Trampelpfad"),
and helas: there is already a tag-page:
http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Tag:highway%3Dtrail

It isn't very clear though and from the picture I'd say that is highway=path.

I am aiming at stuff like this:
http://www.thesenselessunit.net/funnystuff/trampelpfad.jpg
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/74/Trampelpfad_zum_Michaelberg_im_Maudacher_Bruch.jpg
http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_Kenkp9DHXXA/SsrR-lYGdOI/AAAAAAAAB0Q/HqUc6Nob-Ag/s320/trampelpfad1.jpg

especially in urban setting (unofficial ways in parks where there
should have been a way but nobody planned/built it and similar
situations).

We could hijack the trail page (given that trail to native speakers
implies what I want to express) and - after getting to a conclusion
here - put a meaningful definition there. An alternative could be
highway=informal (IMHO; what do you think?).

There are currently according to taginfo 77 ways highway=trail in our
data, which is 0,00% of the total of 32,7 million ways tagged with
highway. Probably most (if not all) of those ways will still be
congruent with the refined new definition of highway=trail, but we
could attach a FIXME to them.

Or do you already have another well established tag for those informal paths?

Cheers,
Martin



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