[OSM-talk-be] RFC: explicit tagging of 'Jaagpaden'

[Pieter Vander Vennet]

Hello everyone,

Even though the legal restrictions of 'Jaagpaden' (towpaths in proper
English) is already described in detail on the wiki
<https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/NL:Jaagpad>, it would still be
useful to reflect the special status explicitly, in our case to give a
comfort bonus in cycling route planning but also for historical purposes.

For context, a 'jaagpad', 'trekpad' or towing path is a path that used
to be used to (literally) tow boats through the canals, either with
manpower or horsepower and a rope attached to the boat - hence there are
never trees between a towpath.

With the rise of cheap and powerful combustion engines, this practice
became disused and towpaths became service roads and cycleways.

As stated, these often are excellent and heavily preferred by cyclists.
Normally, they are wide, asphalted, there are very few cars and
especially: there is the very nice scenery of the canal.

Therefore, I would propose to introduce tagging in Belgium to tag towpaths.


There are two ways to achieve this:

- A towpath is typically a specific type of service road, so we can add
`service=towpath`

- In the UK, the towpaths are tagged with `towpath=yes`

Note that towpaths in Flanders are mostly signposted with an official
sign, even though that this is a bit of a legal remnant of a previous
era. However, it makes it very explicit and thus unambiguous to map.

But now, for the serious questions:

- what are your thoughts of mapping them somehow? IMHO it is an added
value and I'm quite in favour of them.

- What is the best way of mapping them? I'm a bit on the edge of the
options above: `service=towpath` is IMHO semantically the most correct
form, as it indicates that it is a service road originally built for
towing. `towpath=yes` reeks more of the legal status (i.e. having a
formal road sign indicating 'jaagpad'). The latter has the advantage of
already being in use in the UK with over 3500 instances according to
taginfo. service=towpath is not in use at the moment.


PS: fun etymological fact: the English verb 'to tow' is derived from the
Dutch word for rope: 'touw'

-- 
Met vriendelijke groeten,
Pieter Vander Vennet

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