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

[Richard Fairhurst]

Sarah Hoffmann wrote:
> That said, my favourite solution here would indeed be to add a new 
> main tag highway=trail and slowly retag the existing mountain 
> paths starting with the most dangerous/abused ones.

Fully agree with this, other than the slight detail that =trail is the wrong
value.

In some usages (particularly American English), "trail" can mean any
medium/long-distance off-road path, including nicely manicured, tarmaced
bike routes. For example, the Katy Trail, the Trail of the Coeur d'Alenes,
and brands such as Rails-to-Trails and traillink.com. I suspect that
highway=trail would immediately be repurposed for those and we'd be deeper
into the same mess. OSM, of course, speaks British English, but we do try to
avoid obvious ambiguities (hence footway=sidewalk rather than =pavement).

highway=mountain_path works for me for tagging mountain paths.

cheers
Richard



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