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

[John Willis]

> "Path (is) a trail for the use of, or worn by, pedestrians". 
> So path=trail does not work semantically anyway.

Path: tied to man-made landuses& amenities in general. 

Trail: tied to natural landuses, in general. 



A path is tied to urban/suburban/rural landuses: an urban route for pedestrians, or part of regular man-made infrastructure: a sidewalk, a walkway, or other man-made route between urban and suburban features  A sidewalk, a path in a park, or other another route that is supplementary to the road infrastructure/man-made amenity. 

A trail is tied to a natural landuse: a rural or wilderness route through terrain that is not supplementary of the existing road network. It is a route that is meant for pedestrians to cross wilderness or geologic features on trails that may have walking hazards or other impediments to walking (grade, surface, Maintenance, smoothness). What those are or their severity can be left to other tags. Why they cross those features may be out of necessity - the only way to reach a remote shrine or hilltop; recreation - a walking route around a mountain or swamp to see nature; or transportation, connecting remote outposts. They may be remote and barely maintained or immensely busy, but the surface+Area it traverses denotes weather it is a path or a trail, extremely similar to “track or esidential/service” 

A person may have a gravel driveway, but because it is a urban/suburban/rural driveway, we tag it as highway surface. 

A gravel track up the side of a mountain may be easy enough to drive a minivan on, but it is a fire break road and tagged as highway=track and tracktype=grade2.

The road itself may be identical. The usage and location set the purpose. 

Under track is the bottom catch-all for 2wheeled vehicles - rutted fire roads passable only by tracked vehicles. 

Trail has rocky, steep, difficult - almost impassable - routes used by mountaineers. 

Yet both track and trail contain a vast amount of easily passable ways - it’s just they are farming tracks or routes through a nature preserve. 

Treating trail as we do track is easy and essential for path-trail separation. 

Occasionally, trails exist in an urban environment which are informal or purposefully designed to be trails, and if their surface and usage fits, then tag it at a trail. 


> 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"
> 
It is possible for all major hiking routes to be properly tagged in a year globally. 

The point is to staunch the bleeding! People are mapping new trails everyday - lets stop mismapping them ASAP! 

People who love trails and use OSM for trails will chew on it. 

I work on mapping cycleways in my area where few mappers do - it is possible for a single mapper to make a big difference. Trail mappers can handle existing trails in a large city pretty easily. A place like Yosemite or John Muir wilderness would take a while, but Mt Fuji or another “single mountain” (Cowles Mtn in San Diego, Golden Gate Park, point Rayes) can be done in an an hour or two in a single sitting by one mapper.

Mapping “where the sidewalk ends” and the trails begin is vital to keep people from being routes where grandma could have a heart attack Climbing a difficult route or break her leg crossing a stream because we routed her on a trail down a ravine rather than on the longer, yet safer sidewalks down along the roads or paths through a local park because there is no way to say “THIS IS A TRAIL, not a walkway through a playground” in OSM. 

JAVBW. 

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