[Tagging] Trailhead tagging

[Tobias Wrede]

Hi eveyone,

Am 21.12.2018 um 19:55 schrieb Peter Elderson:
> Well, in Nederland I'm through, got them all. To initiate a rendering 
> on osm-carto the usage should increase by some 500+ (now on 1400+). I 
> need Germany or Italy!

While on vacation I have mapped trail heads in the US pretty much the 
way Kenny has described it. I've never come across the trail head tag so 
far. In the US trail heads I have encountered were often marked as such 
having some signpost giving information on length, difficulty, 
accessibility etc. And often there was a road sign saying "xyz trail 
head". Often there is a single or very few trails departing there and 
each trail only has one or two access points that are called a trail 
head. (disclaimer: I am sure there are other situations but these are 
the ones I have encountered while on vacation).

In Germany, though, the concept of trail head is not so widely used for 
hiking trails. Very often trails are interconnected forming a mesh and 
are accessible from various locations. What we rather have are marked 
parking lots called "Wanderparkplatz", i. e. "hiking parking lot". There 
is even an official traffic sign: 
https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Datei:Zeichen_317_-_Wandererparkplatz,_StVO_1992.svg. 
The more fancy ones have a map of the surroundings showing all hiking 
trails of the area, possibly with length, hiking duration and 
difficulty. Often there is a waste bin, sometimes a pickinick table, 
very often it's only a few parking spots off the road crossing a forest. 
These hiking parking lots are very often not dedicated to a certain 
trail, though. Often you find them in places where there are footways 
but no marked or named hiking trails at all.

As far as I see we don't currently designate these hiking parking lots 
as such. They are just amenity parking connected to some paths/hiking 
routes plus possibly having an information board mapped. I wouldn't be 
opposed somehow tagging the Wanderparkplatz designation, not sure a 
highway-tag would be right with the amenity, though.

Having this said there are of course also some trail heads in Germany 
that more fit to what I described for the US or what you might have in 
the Netherlands. But they are the minority here I would say.

all the best for the new Year
Tobias