[Tagging] Mistagging footways as highway=pedestrian

[Fernando Trebien]

On Thu, Feb 28, 2019 at 3:12 PM Paul Allen <pla16021 at gmail.com> wrote:
> And possibly law.  Or at least the intentions of the owner of the way.  Vehicular access may be
> prohibited by law, even if it's physically possible.  Or it may be restricted to service vehicles
> supplying shops along the way (do we have an access value for that?) or at certain times of
> day.  Even if the restrictions are not legal they may be civil: "This is mine and I only permit
> pedestrians."

Indeed, legal restrictions often say a lot (maybe more than physical
attributes) about the purpose/function of a way, from motorways all
the way down to sidewalks.

Just like physical attributes, it is an imperfect indicator when
things aren't as expected, such as when a major highway briefly
narrows because there was not money left to build it (a common thing
in developing countries), or when a rural highway continues into a
city, changing physical attributes because that small part of it was
built by the city (with its own parameters) and not the country's
government.

> The real world is messy.  Life would be much simpler if we could make it conform to our
> tagging schemes instead of having to come up with tags that describe reality.

I've found that the difficult/controversial situations in OSM are much
simpler to decide when thinking about a way's main function in its
local context. So I see value in both a strict set of rules that solve
95% (hopefully 99%) of the problem of highway classification, but the
remaining few % may require discussion and consensus by locals.

-- 
Fernando Trebien