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

Kevin Kenny kevin.b.kenny at gmail.com
Thu May 28 20:05:42 UTC 2020


My very first attempts at editing with JOSM, some years ago, were
adding hiking paths.  I followed JOSM's templates, with
'Highways->Ways->Path' appearing to be a natural match, and got
`highway=path foot=designated etc.` for the constructed path.

I uploaded the result.

Another mapper gave me a (very mild) scolding, changed them all to
`footway`, and steered me to the JOSM templates for dedicated footway,
dedicated cycleway, bridleway, combined foot/cycleway, and so on.
Since then,I've been using those, which causes `highway=path` to
appear for any combined foot/cycleway, but causes `highway=footway` to
appear for anything from a broad paved path in a city park to a
technical wilderness trail.

According to Florimond, that's correct. According to Daniel, that's
read as an assertion that the technical trail is an urban footway.
According to the Wiki, it depends on what page you read and how far
you get into the comments. According to the mapped data, it varies
considerably according to where you are. (Near me, there's a major
cycleway - paved doubletrack - that's 'highway=path bicycle=designated
foot=yes'. I walk a few km on it nearly every day.) To a data
consumer, it's "oh well, I don't know what it is" and either an
optimistic assumption that it's routable or a pessimistic assumption
that it isn't.

Compounding the issue is that while the `path` preset offered all the
'surface', 'smoothness', 'incline', etc. tags, at the time the
`footway` preset was much more limited. It does now; that's been
fixed. Well, mostly: `footway` and `cycleway` still don't offer ski,
snowmobile, sac_scale, mtb_scale or visibility; those are available
only on `path`. So the confusion appears to run deep, with even JOSM's
presets running both ways - paths get the option to have the 'back
country' options, while cycleway/footway do not, but
combined-foot-and-cycleway is a path.

I'm now trying to make it a practice to supply `surface` and
`smoothness` when I add trails, and `sac_scale` where I think I can
scale it without too much controversy. See my earlier message about
how I've had southern Germans look at what I'd consider a highly
technical (grade 4 on the Yosemite scale) trail, and insist that it's
at most 'mountain hiking'. I think they simply refuse to concede that
technical trails might exist outside the Alps. I hope that's enough to
keep routers from keeping Granny and little kids off the rock
scrambles and road bikes off the trials courses.

But there are a LOT of highway=footway out there with NO other tags,
or just a name. I don't know what a data consumer may safely assume
about these, or for that mapper, what minimum set of information that
a mapper is expected to provide for the path to be routable.

I'm hoping that the minimum doesn't include 'incline'. Some of the
trails I map are full of PUD's (Pointless Ups and Downs).  I don't
want to have to bring a clinometer in order to map them and to split
segments anywhere that the gradient changes, particularly since tools
like Waymarked Trails are perfectly capable of draping the way over a
digital elevation model.

So I return to, 'what's the minimalist set of attributes that we can
use to guide a data consumer, and conversely, the minimum set of tags
that a data consumer needs to recognize?' Specifying every attribute
in excruciating detail is fine if you're trying to map your area
artistically and say as much as possible; it shouldn't be necessary
for a mapper to do so, or for a data consumer to understand
everything, in order to get reasonable approximate results.

On Thu, May 28, 2020 at 2:21 PM Florimond Berthoux
<florimond.berthoux at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Hello,
>
> That's crazy how much people get confused about the triplets path/footway/cycleway
>
> highway=path for mixed path
> highway=footway for foot path
> highway=cycleway for cycle path
> Nothing to do with surface, localization, or whatever other properties, just there main usage.
> We should not map multiple feature in one tag.
>
> The wiki explain it well :
> https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Key:highway
>
> highway footway : For designated footpaths; i.e., mainly/exclusively for pedestrians. This includes walking tracks and gravel paths. If bicycles are allowed as well, you can indicate this by adding a bicycle=yes tag. Should not be used for paths where the primary or intended usage is unknown. [...]
>
> highway cycleway : For designated cycleways. Add foot=* only if default-access-restrictions do not apply
>
> highway path : A non-specific path. [...]
>
>
> Le mer. 27 mai 2020 à 14:00, Daniel Westergren <westis at gmail.com> a écrit :
>>
>>
>>> Would it be wrong to set sac_scale=hiking on an urban footway? I’m worried that we’ll get highway=path, foot=designated, cycle=designated, surface=paved, width=2.5, lit=yes, rubbish_bins_every=100m, sac_scale=hiking.
>>
>>
>> Same with mtb:scale.
>>
>> A footway or cycleway should, in my opinion, never have sac_scale or mtb:scale, unless we introduce explicit values like sac_scale=no and mtb:scale=no. If it has sac_scale=hiking or above, or mtb:scale=0 or above (remember, mtb:scale is based on the Singletrail Scale and even a value of 0 should only be used for a singletrail), then it's not a footway or cycleway, but a path. And if it has a sac_scale or mtb:scale value, then we should already tell by that, that it's not accessible to everyone.
>>
>> And a path should never get surface=paved, asphalt or similar, because then it's not a path, but a footway or cycleway.
>>
>> But again, with the current use of highway=path it can be and is used for anything. That's why depend on subtags (trolltags) and that's what we need to get away from.
>>
>> So yes, if we could separate footway, cycleway and path clearly from each other, then we can know that a path is always (if it's used correctly) used for unpaved paths that may not be accessible to people of all abilities.
>>
>> As for "hiking paths", it's also a word that confuses me. I think we're here talking about the way (that has certain physical characteristics), not the route, however people may use them (anyone can hike on a path, whether it's part of a route or not). And if we can't organize paths hierarchically like roads, then also context becomes irrelevant when separating footway and cycleway from path.
>>
>> /Daniel
>>
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>
>
> --
> Florimond Berthoux
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-- 
73 de ke9tv/2, Kevin



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