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

ghia ghia at ghia.eu
Sat Feb 20 17:24:50 UTC 2021 

I agree!

There seems at first sight no raison to differentiate the paths and to 
map some as footway, and others as path. I think they should all be 
mapped as path.

If there are some with bicycles allowed, this can be tagged by bicycle 
yes or no.

Regards,

Gerard

On 2021-02-19 15:06, Matthieu Gaillet wrote:

> First, I would certainly not break a good work - even if I disagree - 
> like you did here for example: 
> https://www.openstreetmap.org/#map=16/50.4822/4.9482. That's clearly a 
> work done with precision and evidently the tags are used consistently.
> 
> That said,  I'm currently checking / correcting all the uses of the 
> footway tag outside urbanised areas in the Haute-Meuse region (from 
> Givet to Namur) and in 99,99% of cases, at least from the consistency 
> point of view, it was an error of the mapper, mostly influenced by 
> politics (mapper that wants to emphasis the pedestrian character of a 
> vicinal path) or simply by mistake or ignorance.
> 
> Actually I don't really care about the use of the footway tag like you 
> did IF and only IF it is consistent all over OSM and that there is a 
> consensus about that use. As far as I can see your way of doing things 
> is an isolated case.
> 
> I really believe that there is a misunderstanding in the definition of 
> the word itself. Have a look at that query of  google Images [1] on the 
> word footway. Even if those footways can be unpaved (clay for example), 
> all of the pictures refers to urbanised places. The word footway refers 
> to "trottoirs" or "voetpad" much more than "sentier" or "pad".
> 
> Therefore, with all due respect to your work, I believe that you're 
> wrong 😊 It might be considered as mapping for the renderer since 
> default OSM maps don't really make the difference between a "normal" 
> path and a path tagged as narrow or difficult. But even if your 
> approach could make sense, the use of that footway tag is wrong for me. 
> Other renderers are perfectly using the trail_difficulty and 
> trail_visibility tags that are made for such use.
> 
> On the screen capure of opentopomap [2] below, the green arrow shows a 
> "normal" path, where the red one shows a difficult path I mapped 
> recently. It works !
> 
> Again and finally : for the immense majority of the people, a "footway" 
> is a safe place to walk. Definitively not an alpine path.
> 
> Matthieu
> 
> On 18 Feb 2021, at 13:32, Francois Gerin <francois.gerin at gmail.com> 
> wrote:
> 
> Hi all,
> 
> I faced the same question a while ago. 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.
> 
> First, for years I didn't changed the map when already mapped. And I 
> mapped "like the area around" to be consistent. But then I became more 
> active and started to refresh and map not-yet-covered areas in my 
> region. Mainly woods and forest, where less mappers work and because 
> there was a clear need.
> => Quickly I realized that it was really important to map 
> "appropriately" in such areas. And, just for the confirmation, I 
> encountered several times people lost, sometime with babies and bikes 
> in quite dangerous areas. (That happened many times in the forest of 
> Marche-les-Dames, that a full refreshed recently.)
> 
> I ended with this "simple" approach, which is also the best "consensus" 
> (for myself) from the different definitions, remarks, wiki pages, and 
> compatible with forest use:
> 
> - Everything is mostly a path, except if it is a track or a footway.
> 
> - A track is where a 4-wheels vehicle, more specifically a forestry 
> tractor, can (if traces on the ground) or is used to pass. (Distinction 
> made so that a path does not become a track just because a quad can 
> pass!)
> 
> - 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.
> 
> When I reached that approach, I read again the different points of 
> view, remarks, wiki, to conclude that it was respecting quite well most 
> of the points considered important. And, for me, it also satisfied the 
> need to make that distinction, which is important on site. (cf. lost 
> people, dangerous situations)
> 
> Note that even if I'm a biker, I force myself to consider OSM for the 
> "end user". With the distinction I make for a "standard end user": 
> Consider the map like a family getting out for a walk on the Sunday... 
> Neither for a pro mountain biker, nor a horse driver. Even if those 
> categories probably benefit the most from the distinction.
> 
> My 2 cents.
> 
> ++
> François
> 
> On 18/02/21 12:49, Pieter Vander Vennet wrote:
> 
> 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 [3] 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 - but that 
> place [4] 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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Links:
------
[1] 
https://www.google.com/search?q=footway&client=safari&hl=fr&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwjl4pmUgfbuAhVMwKQKHXTgDnQQ_AUoAnoECAgQBA&biw=1280&bih=642
[2] https://opentopomap.org/#map=16/50.31757/4.82489
[3] https://www.openstreetmap.org/way/107877794
[4] https://www.openstreetmap.org/way/126568080
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