[Talk-GB] UK Rights of Way - WikiProject

Andy Street mail at andystreet.me.uk
Fri May 4 22:19:56 BST 2012


On Fri, 2012-05-04 at 14:32 +0100, Andrew Chadwick wrote:
> On 03/05/12 21:34, Andy Street wrote:
> >> No. Designation tags imply nothing in OSM right now, as currently
> >> documented, and by design IIRC. Also, I refer you to the recent mailing
> >> list post regarding other countries and what they might mean by
> >> "designation=public_footpath".
> > 
> > So if I told you there was a way in Hampshire tagged highway=path,
> > designation=public_footpath you'd have no idea if you could walk it?
> 
> Obviously I would, but how does what one person can infer matter for the
> general case?

It just demonstrates my point that tagging in this manner provides
sufficient information to draw such conclusions without the need to
clutter up the highway tag.

> I would say that it is not tagged sufficiently to allow generic data
> consumers which do not have special knowledge of what that local
> designation=public_footpath means to determine whether it can be walked
> legally. Big difference. I would also say that tagging it
> highway=footway, designation=public_footpath instead would say more
> about the usage or build, but not much more.

I'd agree that generic consumers will struggle with highway=path,
designation=* but that is a wider OSM issue and not limited to the
path/footway, etc. debate. Anyone using OSM data should be
pre-processing it to take into account local laws/customs and their
particular use case. For example, you are probably going to come a
cropper if you go around assuming that roads across the globe without an
explicit maxspeed tag all have the same default value.

I also fail to see how highway=footway/cycleway/bridleway would help
here either. Looking at this[1] wiki page shows all manner of different
default permissions dependent on different geographical regions. The
only way I can see to completely eradicate this problem would be a full
set of access tags (foot=*, horse=*, etc) on every way but that is not
something either of us would find desirable.

> >> If
> >> it's not a made cycleway or something used by horse riders, then that
> >> leaves footway by exclusion in this country, or no mappable path at all.
> > 
> > Which would have us tagging things as highway=footway,
> > designation=public_bridleway or highway=bridleway,
> > designation=public_footpath!
> 
> I fail to see any problem here. There are plenty of public footpaths out
> there which are well-used private horse gallops, and not every public
> bridleway has a predominance of horse rider traffic.

I thought you were trying to simplify things for newbies. Giving them
two values which appear to contradict each other isn't going to help.

> > Perhaps you'd like to tell me how I should map this (and why):
> > 
> > http://andystreet.me.uk/osm/canyouguesswhatitisyet.jpg
> 
> Not really, no. Your mapping is your business except where it directly
> conflicts with mine, at which point we would have to come to a suitable
> agreement. On a more practical note, there's not really enough of a view
> of the ground to determine what those tracks are or even what the
> surface is, I've almost not visited it myself, and you've purposefully
> obscured the waymarker, hiding the official intent behind the way's
> existence.

My point here was that a large percentage of the time it can be nigh on
impossible to tell a footpath from a bridleway based on physical
characteristics alone. I know from previous experience that horses use
that path but when I visited there was absolutely no indication (other
than the waymarker) of their use. If we tag highway based on designation
alone then all we are doing is duplicating data and had I been visiting
for the first time using your "tag for the primary user" rule then I'd
assume highway=footway, which would be incorrect.


I'm not anti highway=footway/bridleway and have tagged a large number of
ways with them in the past. I simply feel that the richer tagging scheme
that has evolved since their introduction has made them redundant. What
does peeve me though is the attitude that highway=path is somehow wrong
and we shouldn't tell newbies about it in case they get into bad habits.


Cheers,

Andy

P.S. It would appear that this thread is at risk of turning into a
difference of opinions between two individuals rather than a discussion
amongst the wider community. Out of consideration for the other users of
this list I will therefore not be making any further replies to this
thread.

[1]
http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/OSM_tags_for_routing/Access-Restrictions





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