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

Sun May 24 16:51:46 UTC 2020

Path and trail are confusingly near in meaning.
The first Google search result <https://diffsense.com/diff/path/trail> on
the difference between the meaning of path and trail says
*: *"*Pat**h** (is) a trail* for the use of, or worn by, pedestrians".
So path=trail does not work semantically anyway.

Creating a new path=trail tag will not do any good, as it will be
practically impossible to re-tag all the existing "highwa=path" ways that
fall into the new category. Which means the only effect it will have that
routers and renderers need to ad this as an additional possible tagging to
their already complicated evaluation

This proposal is not going to fly, unfortunately. As I said before the big
issue, at least in central Europe, is the massiv use of highway=path (with
the additional "designated" tags) for foot-cycleways. We will have to live
with that. The non-foot-cycle "paths" can be handled by surface, smootness,
and sac-scale tags.

On Sun, 24 May 2020 at 16:33, Daniel Westergren <westis at gmail.com> wrote:

> Well said John. When we now have highway=path, we need a subtag.
>
> Question is, on what criteria would we differentiate a trail from another
> "path"? Groomed vs beaten may not be specific enough. But by using some
> combination of dictionary definitions of trail, in the sense of path, could
> we come up with some verifiable criteria for when such a subtag should be
> used? What I'm looking for is to differentiate forest and mountain paths
> from urban paths or groomed, smooth paths. When people have been clearing
> forest to make a path more visible and passable, that's still a beaten path
> to me.
>
> And yes, path=trail would probably need to be used for trails tagged as
> footway too, although I personally see footway as an urban path and always
> use path for a trail.
>
> Whatever subtag , we're still stuck with all those cases when highway=path
> is not combined with any other tag (whether it should be path=trail or
> anything else). How would we treat those? Obviously we can't take it for
> granted that those cases should have path=trail.
>
>
>    1. Can we agree on whether or not we need a subtag like path=trail?
>    Since it's probably too late for highway=trail, which by all means would
>    have been the best option.
>    2. If we introduce path=trail, what would be the criteria for when it
>    should be used?
>    3. What about all the cases of highway=path that don't have and will
>    not have path=trail? Old or new. Some probably should (like when
>    surface=ground), others should never have path=trail. It will still make it
>    difficult to render those cases and for data consumers to choose a fallback
>    value for those cases.
>    4. What about edge cases? It may have been a beaten path that has been
>    groomed with better surface material to make it more accessible for
>    example. Would it still be considered for path=trail?
>
>
> /Daniel
>
> Den sön 24 maj 2020 kl 16:05 skrev John Willis via Tagging <
> tagging at openstreetmap.org>:
>
>> The sac=scale is a attribute of trails.
>>
>> Yet we do not explicitly state “this is a trail”
>>
>> We should have a path=trail subtag.
>>
>> The presence or absence of a sac_scale Tag shouldn’t mean it is a trail.
>>
>> Imagine we had no highway=track. That we dumped all tracks into
>> highway=service. That is what we are doing now with trails.
>>
>> Would you want to depend on the tracktype=* tag for denoting that it is,
>> in fact, a track? At least track type has “track” in the key name.
>> If someone didn’t set it, it would map like the parking lots and
>> alleyways in cities. Madness.
>>
>> Sac_scale is an arcane attribute for hiking nerds - it is great to have,
>> but shouldn’t be the tag that differentiates a hiking trail from a sidewalk
>> in OSM. That should have been a separate tag from day one, but we are now
>> stuck with the monstrosity that is path=.
>>
>> At least subkey it.
>>
>>
>> Javbw
>>
>> On May 24, 2020, at 10:03 AM, Andrew Harvey <andrew.harvey4 at gmail.com>
>> wrote:
>>
>> 
>>
>>
>> On Sun, 24 May 2020 at 07:42, John Willis via Tagging <
>> tagging at openstreetmap.org> wrote:
>>
>>> =path is such a horrible catch-all tag and one that is extremely
>>> entrenched - I am surprised no one has implemented a path=trail subtag,
>>> similar to sidewalk, so we can separate all the hiking trails and other
>>> “hiking” paths, and then apply different hiking limitations you wouldn’t
>>> expect to find on a sidewalk or playground way.
>>>
>>
>> Right now you can use
>> sac_scale=hiking,mountain_hiking,demanding_mountain_hiking to indicate if a
>> path is a hiking trail. Though you can't really currently say something is
>> not a hiking trail.
>>
>> On Sun, 24 May 2020 at 10:01, Kevin Kenny <kevin.b.kenny at gmail.com>
>> wrote:
>>
>>> On Sat, May 23, 2020 at 5:42 PM John Willis via Tagging
>>> <tagging at openstreetmap.org> wrote:
>>> >
>>> > =path is such a horrible catch-all tag and one that is extremely
>>> entrenched - I am surprised no one has implemented a path=trail subtag,
>>> similar to sidewalk, so we can separate all the hiking trails and other
>>> “hiking” paths, and then apply different hiking limitations you wouldn’t
>>> expect to find on a sidewalk or playground way.
>>> >
>>> > Mixing trails and sidewalks in the path key is as horrible as mixing
>>> up runways and train tracks in a “highway=not_car” way.
>>>
>>> Yeah. But it's so entrenched that trolltags are probably the only way
>>> out of the mess. And sac_scale is _surely_ not the right trolltag! The
>>> problem with sac_scale is that it's an impossible scale. I'm told that
>>> https://youtu.be/VKsD1qBpVYc?t=533 is still only a 2 out of 6 on that
>>> scale, and that https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3y5_lbQZJwQ is still
>>> only a 3. Note that one misstep on either of those trails can easily
>>> mean death.
>>>
>>
>>  https://youtu.be/VKsD1qBpVYc?t=533 I would tag
>> as sac_scale=demanding_mountain_hiking, my rule of thumb is anything where
>> the average person would need to use their hands to get over an obstacle
>> is demanding_mountain_hiking. This is what the wiki says too "exposed sites
>> may be secured with ropes or chains, possible need to use hands for
>> balance".
>>
>> Anything that doesn't need hands, but has a fall hazard/is exposed would
>> be sac_scale=mountain_hiking (assuming it's not alpine).
>>
>> _______________________________________________
>> Tagging mailing list
>> Tagging at openstreetmap.org
>> https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/tagging
>>
> _______________________________________________
> Tagging mailing list
> Tagging at openstreetmap.org
> https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/tagging
>
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.openstreetmap.org/pipermail/tagging/attachments/20200524/ab848674/attachment.htm>