[Tagging] Reviving the path discussion - the increasing importance of trails in OSM

[Volker Schmidt]

I am not a fan of the confusing use of highway=path  for foot-cycleways and
narrow mountain hiking ways, but that is a fact in OSM, and we need to live
with that.

However I would like to underline that highway=cycleway or highway=path +
foot=designated + bicycle=designated do not necessarily imply the
suitability of the way for normal bicycles.. These tags only tell you about
he legal access of the way. Surface, smoothness, and width (or est_width),
together with the elevation profile (data that is not in OSM) are also
needed for bicycle routing..
For hiking paths you have in addition SAC-scale and MTB-scale.

Examples of unpaved cycleways in my city:
https://www.mapillary.com/map/im/Ezjn-npOmRSQ-dHkMztzl
<https://www.mapillary.com/map/im/Ezjn-npOmRSQ-dHkMztzlQ>  (cycleway)
https://www.mapillary.com/map/im/DWHevDzL7i9eQDYSNbvCJcg
<https://www.mapillary.com/map/im/DWHevDzL7i9eQDYSNbCJcg> (foot-cycleway)
https://www.mapillary.com/map/im/lAnBsThrDjTxjhvfXhB0Yg (cycle lane)

The problem is guessing by routers in case of incomplete tagging. Just to
get myself an idea I checked:
My city shows 1533 ways tagged as cycleways and foot-cycleways, of which
91.7% with surface, 54.7% with smoothness, 52.1% with width
(This excludes all cycle lanes and a few cycleways that are not present as
separate ways in OSM)

Basically we have the instruments - let's use them instead of inventing new
tags.



On Thu, 21 May 2020 at 16:15, Adam Franco <adamfranco at gmail.com> wrote:

> For those who missed it, a related discussion was just had on this list
> about differentiating mountain-biking trails from cycleways.
> See the resulting proposal for path=mtb
> https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Proposed_features/Tag:path%3Dmtb and
> threads from April in Tagging:
> https://lists.openstreetmap.org/pipermail/tagging/2020-April/051864.html
>
> On Thu, May 21, 2020 at 8:51 AM Andy Townsend <ajt1047 at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>>
>> On 21/05/2020 10:50, Mateusz Konieczny via Tagging wrote:
>>
>>
>>
>> Similarly anyone creating
>> highway=footway + danger="you will be shot" + "access=no" + foot=yes"
>> should probably switch to pickpocketing, telemarketing or other less
>> harmful activity.
>>
>> While "danger" isn't a much used tag (and I'm sure wasn't a serious
>> suggestion here - https://taginfo.openstreetmap.org/keys/danger#values
>> ), sometimes "foot=yes" is correct and other tags need to be taken into
>> account.  I've used the area around
>> https://www.openstreetmap.org/way/431056034 as an example of that
>> before.  Here "foot=yes" is correct - there is a legal right of access.  "
>> sac_scale
>> <https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Key:sac%0D%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20scale?uselang=en-GB>=demanding_alpine_hiking"
>> also makes sense here I think.
>>
>> I take Frederik's reference to Andy Allan's point about "a
>> multi-billion-dollar-revenue organisation that were rendering anything with
>> a highway tag the same as their most minor road style" but frankly there's
>> simply no solution to that - presumably "highway=dangerouspath" (to make up
>> a nonsensical value) or
>> https://taginfo.openstreetmap.org/tags/highway=via%20ferrata would still
>> get shown as a "road".
>>
>> Map styles need to be clear about what they're showing and what they're
>> not showing and people using maps need to be able to read maps so that they
>> understand what they're being told.  This isn't really a tagging issue,
>> unless OSM mappers aren't using appropriate other tags when they should
>> (sac_scale, trail_visibility, surface, etc.)
>>
>> Best Regards,
>>
>> Andy
>>
>>
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