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

brad bradhaack at fastmail.com
Mon May 25 18:34:30 UTC 2020


I think I agree with what Kevin is saying, but I confess I'm not sure 
what the problem is.   In my area, even looking at a nearby big city,  
most of the 'paths' are dirt trails.   There are some cycleways too.   
I'm not sure anyone maps sidewalks.
I think the fundamental problem is the original redundant 
footpath/cycleway/bridleway/path tags.   Trying to use the function 
instead of the physical characteristics.   It works for roads, but not 
for multiuser trails.

Someone asked what the hierarchy is.   Trails don't usually have a 
hierarchy like roads do.
Someone discussed purposely built paths vs naturally created trails.  
This doesn't work.  A lot of new trails are being built and they are 
designed and built by man and machine.  In steep terrain many old 
naturally created trails are eroded and rutted and closed down, or 
rerouted, or maintained by volunteers.

On 5/25/20 11:51 AM, Kevin Kenny wrote:
>
> Let me reiterate that the subkey that's needed is actually the one
> that asserts 'this IS what one would expect of an urban or suburban
> footway', rather than 'this is a relatively unimproved "natural"
> trail'. We already have many attributes that would indicate that a
> trail might be relatively unimproved (`surface=ground`; `incline=*`;
> `wheelchair=no`; `width=*`, `smoothness=*`, `sac_scale=*` and so on).
> The fundamental problem is that it is not safe to draw any conclusion
> from the absence of such a tag. A mapper may have tagged a wilderness
> trail as `highway=path` or `highway=footway` and simply not added the
> other attributes.
>
> The best way to help the data consumer will be to have a tagging
> scheme that allows asserting 'this IS an urban/suburban/front-country
> footpath' as well as 'this is a relatively unimproved trail'.  It's
> true at the start that providing such a thing will leave most
> `highway=path` features ambiguous, but it at least would open a way
> forward for disambiguating them. `path=trail` will NOT accomplish that
> goal, because it still leaves two choices: 'this is a trail', and
> 'this is unknown/ambiguous'.




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