[Tagging] foot=yes or bicycle=yes on track without other limitations?

[SomeoneElse]

Maarten Deen wrote:
> Is there a deeper meaning of adding foot=yes or bicycle=yes to 
> highway=track or highway=path without adding other limitations? I 
> thought track and path are by default routable for foot and bicycle, 
> so IMHO they add nothing.

I suspect that there's a confusion about legality of access and physical 
accessibility here - "bicycle=yes" only addresses the legal ability to 
access something, not the physical possibility of doing so.

It might be the case that all highway=track are physically and legally 
accesible by foot and bicycle where you are, but it's not the case 
everywhere.  I certainly wouldn't make the assumption that a 
highway=track with no information about access rights was legally 
accessible to foot or bicycle traffic in England and Wales, for example.

That's not to say what adding a track without access rights isn't 
useful, it is - it says that the track's there, but in places where 
access isn't implicit it's useful to know the legal status if known 
(e.g. foot=yes, foot=permissive.

Cheers,

Andy