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

Sat Feb 20 08:47:53 UTC 2021

> _Just read a little before [1] the tag you pointed to: that's written 
> "black on white" and does not says anything else than what I do..._
> 
> highway=path This is the default tag. However, there are other options 
> too.
> [...]
> footway | Paths 'designed' for pedestrians where vehicles have no 
> access.

Yes, this means that pedestrians do not follow as usual the street, but 
have a separated way of their own, mostly announced with a round blue 
traffic sign.

Footway is the sibling of cycleway, but less common and therefore much 
unknown.

> _(NOTE: on legal grounds, a bicycle is considered as a vehicle in many 
> cases, even if disturbing. Horses too. I was surprised to learn this.)_

It is in the traffic laws: a horse rider is a conductor / driver just as 
someone who rides a bike or car.

Regards,

Gerard

On 2021-02-20 08:00, Francois Gerin wrote:

> Hi Steven,
> 
> I fully agree: paths (and tracks) are the most used ones, especially in 
> the area I cover.
> 
> But in some cases, much less frequent, there are ways that do not match 
> the path+designation scheme. These ways are not (yet) known/monitored 
> by the administration (cf. vicinal...). There is no sign. The width 
> varies most often under 1 meter, sometime even less than 20cm, and is 
> not reliable, like the surface. It also varies according to seasons.
> 
> These tracks are definitely made by/for pedestrians: some like thin 
> mountain traces, sometime with stairs, sometime passing between rocks 
> with less room than the width of a mountain bike, etc. These are not 
> official, there is no vicinal reference, there is nothing known about 
> them officially. (That's one of the reason I cover the region in a 
> systematic way and update with balnam. I already reported many new 
> paths. Blanm then triggers official administration to reference them.)
> 
> I read again the link you shared, which is the most important page and 
> the one I considered the most when cross-checking the different pages. 
> And, again, it is fully compatible.
> Just read a little before [1] the tag you pointed to: that's written 
> "black on white" and does not says anything else than what I do...
> 
> highway=path This is the default tag. However, there are other options 
> too.
> [...]
> footway | Paths 'designed' for pedestrians where vehicles have no 
> access.
> 
> (NOTE: on legal grounds, a bicycle is considered as a vehicle in many 
> cases, even if disturbing. Horses too. I was surprised to learn this.)
> 
> If you compile all the various wiki pages pointing to that topic, or 
> more exactly mentioning a few elements, and compare with the reality on 
> site, you will see that the path definition does not really match the 
> reality, while the definition of the footway fully matches, if you 
> consider the "mainly" word. This word exists and is part of the 
> official definition which is NOT a draft. This word is tghere and 
> important. As already mentioned, it closes the gap that was left empty.
> That's a single sentence, but everything is in it. I checked again and 
> again, spent a lot of time on this, several times, and each time the 
> conclusion was the same.
> => If the definitions are to be changed, then it must be official. If 
> the draft takes precedence on the official definitions, even if weird, 
> it has to be clear. The slow road page and other drafts/non-drafts 
> should be cleaned up, removed or turned official after a reasonable 
> time.
> In the meantime, I can only reach the same conclusion if I respect the 
> texts... Again and again. (I spent more than 900 hours, just on the 
> last two years, working on this, covering about 650 ways. And the time 
> spent on site is clearly not the biggest part!)
> 
> PS: I would love to make use of the vicinal_ attributes... Since I 
> cover a quite wide area, with the end of monitoring/referencing paths 
> on site also for balnam, the vicinal_ stuff would be really great. But 
> it is a draft. And, in the meantime, there are pages that are official, 
> like the definitions. Even if in many cases, a situation can lead to 
> either one or another interpretation, there are some cases that are 
> definitely clear. If a way is designed for pedestrian (=not easily 
> usable by something else), then the highway=pedestrian can be used. And 
> like I wrote earlier, this is definitely useful, important and would 
> miss if the definition did not included the work "mainly".
> 
> PS2: Changing the definition to remove the "mainly" word is not a 
> solution. It will trigger much more complex issues.
> 
> Regards,
> François
> 
> On 20/02/21 00:26, Steven Clays wrote:
> 
> Hello François,
> 
> https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/WikiProject_Belgium/Conventions/Slowroads#Different_kinds_of_tracks.2Fpaths
> 
> I almost always use highway=path, to avoid the british significance of 
> footway. Actually footway is a 'designation', a legal status. In 
> Belgium you could use designation=communal_road, eg.
> 
> Greets,
> Steven
> 
> Op vr 19 feb. 2021 om 07:00 schreef Francois Gerin 
> <francois.gerin at gmail.com>:
> 
> Hi Matthieu,
> 
> I'm afraid you read too fast, you missed important details.
> 
> Read again the definition [2], the very first and single sentence: the 
> word "mainly" is definitely important, it is directly related to my 
> first mail, the huge work I did on the last two years and I already had 
> exchanges on this here on the mailing just a few months ago. Maybe you 
> can retrieve some archive, just look for my email address or name, you 
> should quickly spot the interesting things.
> 
> There are ways for which a path definition cannot be applied while a 
> footway definition matches exactly. And no, there is no official sign.
> 
> The attributes you mentioned do not match the need, while the 
> definitely tag does. And the definition clearly allows it. Also, tag 
> and attributes are different entities with some hierarchy relationship.
> 
> Also, pay attention to the state of some wiki pages: draft are drafts, 
> even if old. I would love to see elements leaving the draft state... 
> (vicinal_*, among others) But they are drafts, they have been drafts 
> for years and they're very probably going to keep as drafts for yet 
> more time. While there are official non-draft documents that exist and 
> should be respected.
> 
> Any work breaking would be particularly damaging. As you mentioned it 
> yourself, that's a Pandora box. Be sure to understand the history and 
> why things are like they are before breaking.
> 
> Regards,
> François
> 
> On 18/02/21 18:38, Thibault Rommel wrote:
> I tend to try to use this page as an example 
> https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/User:Eimai/Belgian_Roads
> 
> Met vriendelijke groeten Thibault Rommel
> 
> Op do 18 feb. 2021 om 14:01 schreef Matthieu Gaillet 
> <matthieu at gaillet.be>:
> 
> Thanks for sharing your ideas Vincent.
> I mostly agree with you except on that point :
> 
> - A footway is definitely useful: this is a path too small for horses 
> and mountain bikes. (By mountain bikers, I mean "standard people", aka 
> end users, not pro mountain bikers who can pass nearly everywhere a 
> pedestrian passes!) That definitely correspond to what bikers call 
> "singles": a very small track, where two bikes cannot pass side by 
> side. Even if the wiki is not definitive about the use of that tag 
> (mostly because of national specifics), most if not all the pictures 
> refers to ways in urbanized places where the attention has been put on 
> pedestrian mobility. Most are guarded by "pedestrian only" road signs.
> 
> What you're trying to show on the map can be reached with tags like 
> trail_visibility, surface, smoothness, mtb_scale, bicycle, and even 
> width. I believe that mapping a footway for a super small path is 
> leading to exactly the contrary of what you're trying to avoid : people 
> will try to follow those paths because they're emphasised by most 
> renderers.
> 
> I also realized the lack of consensus, but also the good reason for the 
> lack of consensus: the problem is not that simple, and there are 
> different points of view, sometime very opposite, but also with a good 
> common base.
> 
> There *is* actually a consensus if I refer to the reactions to my 
> questioning this morni _______________________________________________
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Links:
------
[1] 
https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/WikiProject_Belgium/Conventions/Slowroads#Standard_tagging
[2] https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Tag:highway%3Dfootway
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