[Tagging] Difference between "yes" and "designated" in access tags (was: Re: How to Tag Steps in a Bridleway)

[stevea]

I'll add some "local" (USA) perspective on how we've been approaching routing (numbered) national-level cycleway routes:  as the route is developed, "infrastructure" ways are selected to be members of the route relation.  Sometimes, these could be infrastructure where it isn't legal to bicycle or maybe it is, but it isn't a good idea (perhaps it is also a shared equestrian path, where cyclists would frequently be yielding to equestrians and pedestrians).  I've done things like this in JOSM while "helping" to develop a route (really I'm mapping it, but sometimes this will legitimately get flagged as a very bad idea) and the Validator plug-in in JOSM will complain "Warning, you are trying to route a way (infrastructure) that has the tag 'bicycle=no' and put that into a 'route=bicycle."  Yeah, thank you for that!  It would be a bad idea to include that as a member in a route relation, so don't.  But my contributions include what somebody (like, "a government" or "the signs") already says IS a route into OSM, so when this happens, I must double-check why I might be "putting the pieces together into OSM's relation incorrectly."  More often than not, it will be because I chose the wrong "sidepath" (maybe a cycleway next to a highway, but I chose the highway instead, and that's a no-no).

There are many, many more kinds of examples, but you get the idea.  Tag access with access=*.  Tag it on an infrastructure way.  If appropriate (and what you are doing), include that way in a route relation as a member.  I know we're not talking about building routes, but access tagging and getting the "yes" and "designated" right (building infrastructure ways properly, with proper tags) is part of the clockwork that others use later on to BUILD those route relations, so it's all important to get correct.  And there ARE "more correct" methods to do things, this is what we call "consensus."

It can be tedious to get there sometimes, but look what we've built (and continue to build) so far!  Thanks for reading.