[Talk-GB] On footpaths

[Nick Whitelegg]

Hello Peter,

I would say the most important thing with official rights of way is to tag them with designation=public_footpath, public_bridleway, public_byway or restricted_byway (as appropriate). The designation tag is AFAIK generally regarded these days as the most definitive indication of rights of way status. Freemap (free-map.org.uk) will only render paths with a designation tag in colour; all other paths are rendered as black lines - but more importantly it makes the data unambiguous.

Physical surface is more contentious. My own preference is highway=path for rough, muddy countryside paths and highway=footway for paved urban paths. Opinions differ on that.

foot,horse, etc are going out of fashion in the main (AFAIK) *unless* it's a permissive path. In this case you need to indicate which modes of transport have permissive access with foot, hors or bicycle = permissive.

However, please note that to get the Mapnik renderer to render highway=path as red dotted lines, you need to tag it with foot=designated - not designation=public_footpath. This is tagging for the renderer, so maybe not a good idea, though I have to admit I do it ATM in addition to the designation tag.

Nick

-----Peter Oliver <p.d.oliver at mavit.org.uk> wrote: -----
To: talk-gb at openstreetmap.org
From: Peter Oliver <p.d.oliver at mavit.org.uk>
Date: 04/05/2011 01:23PM
Subject: [Talk-GB] On footpaths

I'm new to Open Street Map, and in trying to map some local footpaths I pretty rapidly found myself at "http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/United_Kingdom_Tagging_Guidelines#Rights_of_ways_in_England_and_Wales" and the associated controversy.

First, let me summarise the situation as I see it:

• There's an "old" method of tagging ways suitable for pedestrians, and a "new" method.
• No consensus on which method is best has/can be reached, and the two sides of the argument have effectively agreed to differ.  Both tagging methods are in active use.
• Tagging a way "highway=footway" is equivalent to tagging it "highway=path; foot=..." (plus, in either case, additional tags to indicate the legal status of the route).

It seems like I'm now armed with enough knowledge to get stuck in and start mapping some footpaths, using whichever tagging method I happen to prefer.  However, both Mapnik and Osmarender display these two supposedly equivalent forms of footpath differently!  Osmarender uses different colours, and Mapnik replaces a dotted pink line with a dashed black one.

So, my question is, is there some subtle difference in meaning that I've missed between these two tagging methods, or it simply that the renders have not been updated to understand the "new" form of tagging?

-- 
Peter Oliver_______________________________________________
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