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

Thu Feb 18 11:49:31 UTC 2021

Hi everyone,

Sorry to send a second email just after my first, but while doing some 
more research, I found that this controversy is already pretty old; see:

https://www.openstreetmap.org/user/Richard/diary/20333

and

https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Path_controversy

Kind regards,
Pieter

On 18.02.21 12:34, Pieter Vander Vennet wrote:
>
> Hi Matthieu,
>
> Welcome in the swampy fields of tagging discussions ;)
>
> *My view*
>
> First of all, we do professional routeplanning, for both cyclists and 
> pedestrians. And yes, I do (mostly) agree with your view: a path is a 
> small, unpaved (desire) path, e.g. through a forest whereas a footway 
> is IMHO a typical paved (or planned) road of at least 0.5m wide. A 
> rule of thumb that I use is that a wheelchair/stroller could pass 
> easily, or as Gerard said earlier: "it is like a sidewalk, but just 
> not next to a road"
>
> If the "footway" is sufficiently wide that a car /could/ drive over it 
> (but is not allowed to), I'm inclined to mark them as 
> /highway=pedestrian/. This is useful information, as e.g. emergency 
> services might take it during an intervention to get close to the 
> location of the accident.
>
> I'm also inclined to mark a wide, planned way (e.g. in parks) as 
> footways too.
>
> I try to base my road classification mostly on physical aspects: a 
> path stays a path, even if it suddenly has a name board. This is 
> because of my view from routeplanning: in general, I assume that that 
> a footway is accessible to a wheelchair user, whereas a path is not. 
> To explicitly add the vicinal road status, there are some tags for 
> that (vicinal_road:ref IIRC?). This is the only place where I disagree 
> with you:
>
> > 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.
>
> I would still mark those as a `highway=path`, with an additional 
> `bicycle=no` and map the turnstiles/kissing gates explicitly. The data 
> consumer can then decide what to do.
>
> Note however that not everyone agrees with my vision and that I'm not 
> always consistent too - I mapped a very peculiar case 
> <https://www.openstreetmap.org/way/107877794> yesterday that by my 
> objective criteria should be a 'path', but that I mapped as footways 
> due to their context as that felt more appropriate - butthat place 
> <https://www.openstreetmap.org/way/126568080> has given me more 
> tagging questions too...
>
> At last, some people say that "a footway needs a traffic sign to be a 
> footway" or "a cycle path needs a traffic sign to be a cyclepath". 
> That is a view I vehemently reject - not every qualitive footway has a 
> traffic sign nor has every traffic sign a qualitative footway - 
> although a traffic sign can help in making these decisions.
>
> Also abusing `highway=path` for shared infrastructure cycle/pedestrian 
> infrastructure is something I loathe: it erases a lot of information 
> and is an effective downgrade of the relevant ways from a 
> routeplanning perspective, as we have to assume the way is a desire 
> path (small, unpaved); not accessible to e.g. wheelchairs, strollers 
> and rollerskate, instead of the very accessible nicely paved, wide 
> footway. To be able to replicate all the information for this 
> downgrade, we would need `surface=*`, `width=*`, `smoothness=*` and 
> maybe even `wheelchair=*` to be sure it is a highly qualitative 
> footway and quite a bit of tricky and inexact preprocessing. However, 
> I do not have a perfect solution for the shared footways/cycleways as 
> well - but marking as path is definitively worse.
> So, Marc_marc: I'm sorry, but I do not agree with you and some of the 
> wiki definitions! But that is fine - a disagreement is often due to a 
> different perspective or some missing information. And OSM won't fail 
> over a bit of disagreement ;)
>
>
> *Some history*
>
> Apart from my vision, it is also important to know that OpenStreetMap 
> started in the UK, where there are plenty of vicinal roads. I think 
> those where historically mapped as highway=footway too, but I'm not 
> sure of that. Furthermore, as Gerard nicely stated earlier, it is a 
> common translation error.
>
> Furhtermore, the iD editor used to "upgrade" tags: a `highway=footway 
> + bicycle=yes` and `highway=cycleway + foot=yes` got upgraded to 
> `highway=path; bicycle=yes; foot=yes`.  As the iD editor is widely 
> used, there are quite some footways downgraded now...
>
> Kind regards,
> Pieter
>
> On 18.02.21 10:27, Matthieu Gaillet wrote:
>> 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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> -- 
> Met vriendelijke groeten,
> Pieter Vander Vennet

-- 
Met vriendelijke groeten,
Pieter Vander Vennet

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