[OSM-talk-be] Path vs Footpath (sorry for opening the pandora box)

[Matthieu Gaillet]

Hi,

I would like to know if there is some kind of consensus in Belgium regarding the use of <footway> and <path> tags.

My intuitive interpretation in the following : 
a footway, generally speaking, is anything that is specifically created for pedestrians in urbanised areas.
a path, is generally speaking anything that is not a track (thus not for 4 wheeled vehicles) and not (as well) paved like a footway.
I know there are other much more loose interpretations that say that a footway might be a non-paved path, but my question is : why would one tag them differently than others ? After all, a path is not suitable for anything else than pedestrian use (except sometimes bikes) ? On the contrary, footways in urbanised places *are* special and it makes sense to map them differently.

I observe that some mappers are using the footway tags for paths in forests or fields in the middle of nowhere. Those are often “sentiers communaux” (public paths) mapped by balnam affiliates.  Its driving me nuts 😊  
 
- most of the time this difference in the way those paths are mapped doesn’t reflect any physical nor practical reality on the field. 
- this creates vagueness and looseness, I see “normal” paths suddenly showed as “special” on maps without any clear reason. 
- some could argument that the path tag is not detailed enough. That’s not true : it can be (and is) combined with a lot of other tags to qualify it from multiple point of views and renderers are already taking care of them. This is *not* the case of the footway which is (logically) kind of monolithic.

The only exception I see is a path in the country side that is explicitly marked (road signs) as pedestrian only, and/or has turnstiles or other gates to keep other users away.

Do you generally agree with my way of seeing things ? Is it at least the general way of doing things in Belgium ? Thanks for sharing your thoughts.


Matthieu

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