[Talk-GB] designated cycleway, designated bridleway, designated footway

Shaun McDonald shaunmcdonald131 at gmail.com
Fri Aug 3 09:47:18 BST 2007


On 2 Aug 2007, at 18:40, Rik van der Helm wrote:

> Thanks for replying sofar.
>
> Shaun McDonald replied:
>> Since you are in the Netherlands, you might want to join the
>> Netherlands talk list. The hope is to get consistency of the tagging
>> within each country.
>
> I joined talk-nl already, but as far as I can see this topic isn't an
> issue yet in NL. I was thinking of draining your GB experience
> first before raising difficult issues in NL. But if you don't
> agree on that, I will move to NL shortly.
>
> Andy Allen replied:
>> The "designated" refers to their legal status, but in
>> practise this is pretty much impossible to find out with
>> copyright violations from the national mapping agency
>> (the Ordinance Survey). Instead, we use signposts to
>> determine the legal status of a particular route.
>
> So highway=bridleway,highway=cycleway,highway=footway is
> pointing to 'legal way of rights'. This means I can't
> tag footpathes which are not a 'legal way of right' as
> 'highway=footway'. My main question now is how should I tag
> footpathes without a 'legal way of right' ? In the
> map_features I only see 'tracks' as possibility. But this
> doesn't feel right for me (see later).
>
> Shaun McDonald replied:
>> The difference between a track and a path is more in the
>> surface quality, rather than the width. A path is normally
>> paved, whereas a track is more gravel, or more likely 2
>> dips, where tractor wheels have been, often with grass in
>> the middle.
>
> Maybe you can help me on on this. I was thinking about using
> the 'width' distinction because of the desription of 'track'
> in the map_features "unpaved/unsealed roads for agricultural
> use; gravel roads in the forest etc.". My own visualization of
> 'path' is something which is defenitely not a 'road'. My own
> visualization of 'path' is also not something which is by
> definition 'paved'. But I really like to hear if I am biased
> on this, so I can try to adapt myself on a more general view.
>

Quite often paved footpaths are used by maintenance vehicles. Though  
they aren't publicly available for use by motor vehicles.

You also have access=private, for roads or paths that are not open to  
the public.

Shaun





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