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

[Andrew Harvey]

On Sun, 24 May 2020 at 16:29, Daniel Westergren <westis at gmail.com> wrote:

> Great discussion! I think we're discussing two different things here. One
> is about differentiating *trail* (not necessarily hiking trail) from
> other kinds of highway=path and the other is about *difficulty of a
> (hiking) trail* in terms of how technical and demanding it is (and thus
> who can use it and how it will affect walking/hiking/running pace).
>
> I'd like to elaborate on the suggestion *path=trail*, which I think is
> super!!
>
> According to the Cambridge dictionary, a trail is "*a path through a
> countryside, mountain, or forest area, often made or used for a particular
> purpose:*
> *- a forest/mountain trail*
> *- a walking/snowshoeing/cross-country skiing trail*"
>
> Other dictionaries use "*beaten path*", "*a track made by passage
> especially through a wilderness*" or similar.
>
> To me, the main difference is between a *beaten path vs a path that has
> been purposely groomed*.
>
> Could path=trail be used for this distinction? Unlike path=mtb, it would
> not be for trails created for a specific purpose, but any beaten path,
> usually in a forest or mountaineous region.
>

There are a few hiking tracks around mapped as highway=footway, at first I
was "that's wrong", but reading the wiki I couldn't find any fault since
they are designated walking paths.

What are you ultimately trying to distinguish from highway=path?

A very high percentage of the trails near me are all "groomed", they do
this to prevent erosion and track degradation, so while that could be an
indicator for how built up a track is it's not at all an indicator of a
hiking trail.

"Tracktype is a measure of how well-maintained a track or other minor road
is," https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Key:tracktype is basically how
"groomed" a track/road is, are you looking for something similar for paths?


>  Regarding *trail difficulty*, I agree that sac_scale is more for
> different levels of alpinism (and not really relevant for non-mountain
> trails) and that other measures are needed to separate everything that on
> the SAC scale would simply be hiking.
>

> One challenge here is about verifiability. Another is about basing such a
> tag on a scale that is only used in a small part of the world. For people
> in the Alps it may be easy to use the SAC scale, because they walk on
> trails where it's used IRL. Similar with the other suggested scales (what's
> "bush" for someone outside of Australia?).
>

"bush" in Australia is what you'd probably call "woods" or "forest", so
bushwalking (AU) = hiking = tarmping (NZ) = backpacking, etc.
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