[Tagging] River crossing grade

[Andrew Harvey]

On Thu, 27 Jan 2022 at 03:51, Volker Schmidt <voschix at gmail.com> wrote:

> Please do not introduce another grade scale - already enough trouble with
> track grades.
>

I'm not sure what exactly you're referring too here.


>
> Some immediate problems:
>
> a river crossing where your body normally gets wet or you have to swim or
> to take a boat is not a ford.
> (The wiki page key=ford shows as option ford=boat)
>

What's a ford (both in general English) and as in OSM ford=* then? I always
thought a ford is like the picture on the ford=* wiki page, but then the
wiki says

> A ford is a small part of a highway where a waterway runs over it. A ford
can be both constructed (eg with concrete) or with the natural creek-bed.
It can apply to vehicle roads, or to foot, bicycle or horse paths.

For a walking path like highway=footway/path without any construction I
always thought of it more as the path start/ends at either side and you're
crossing the stream/river rather than the river running over the highway
(after all the river was there first), but the wiki is clear than where a
walking path goes through a creek then it's a ford. So if it's not a bridge
or a culvert then it must be a ford. If we want to change the definition of
ford=yes that's fine with me, you could then have another tag like
waterway=X, X=crossing.

On Thu, 27 Jan 2022 at 04:13, Zeke Farwell <ezekielf at gmail.com> wrote:

> A ford is a shallow place in a waterway where one can wade or drive
> through the water.  You will get wet at a ford.  It's not really a ford if
> the stream is so narrow that you can jump across, or so shallow that you
> can walk on stones above the water and your feet barely get wet.  It's also
> not really a ford if the water is so deep that your feet can't touch the
> bottom and you have to swim across.
>

> The osm key "ford" seems to be taking on a wider meaning than the English
> word "ford".  ford=stepping_stones describes something that I would not
> consider a ford.  The wiki also documents ford=boat which sounds very
> strange to me as a native English speaker.  A ford is a place where you
> specifically do not use a boat.  If a boat is used, that is called a ferry.
>

Thanks, that's most helpful and actually matches up with my common
understanding of both the English word "ford" and how OSM defines ford=yes
(the two are slightly different as you mention).


> Rather than overloading the ford key, I suggest we create different tags
> for very narrow/shallow crossing places, and minor ferry boat crossing.
> Neither of these are really fords.  If this is done I think there is much
> less need for a crossing grade scale.
>

What would you suggest? I think a big issue currently is that iD will
convince you if it's not a culvert and not a bridge then you must apply the
ford tag. So we'll have a lot of creek crossings which don't match your
description of a ford tagged as ford=yes for this reason.

I'm happy to help provide input into a different way to tag these things
you say aren't fords, but I don't think this changes the tag I'm proposing
here as knowing how wet you'll get is what I'm trying to tag.
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