[Talk-us] highway=cycleway or highway=path

[Mike N]

On 6/21/2011 7:10 PM, PJ Houser wrote:
> Well, I have a conundrum here in Portland, Oregon. The 4 TriMet mappers
> here in Portland would prefer to tag all multi-use paths as paths, with
> bicycle=designated, particularly because we are attempting to make the
> Portland area routable. OpenTripPlanner, the multi-modal routing
> software we'll be using, routes for walking, bicycling, cars, and
> transit, so I'm hoping to let paths be paths because that implies
> bicycle AND pedestrian are legally allowed equal access


   I see nothing wrong with the JOSM preset for Combined foot- and 
cycleway.

   highway=path
   foot=designated
   bicycle=designated

   This will almost certainly be the setting used by everyone tagging a 
combined use path using JOSM in the future.   Routers should be able to 
key off the 'designated' tag.   I may not be aware, but that tag does 
not imply the legal status in the US as it does in other countries.

    The actual tag - 'path' / 'cycleway' shouldn't be such a big issue; 
it's just a token that could as easily be a hidden value generated by 
editor presets.  For that reason, the syntactic implication of the 
actual tag name does not carry weight; it's merely a mnemonic indicator 
of the tag function.