[OSM-talk] footway vs. path - again and again

[Elena of Valhalla]

On Fri, Nov 7, 2008 at 12:36 AM, sylvain letuffe <liste at letuffe.org> wrote:
>> In Presets->Ways all Hiking paths are highway=path, none of them is
>> highway=footway.
[...]
> footway is ended a very fast way to say : "this if for pedestrians, and this
> is not, or might hardly be for other transport means"
> Something like a composite tag to say :
> Even if a bike is allowed to, he might hardly go there physicaly
>
> While on the opposite, path is clearer and seems to say :
> "I don't care about physics, I'm talking about right to do it"

in my experience an huge number of hiking paths in the lower sac_scale
grades were probably made for (by) pedestrians or animals, because
that's what could historically use them, but have nothing that
physically prevents certain other means of transport [1] on most of
their lenght

there may be legal restrictions (thus the access tags) and there may
be physical obstacles: the state of a path may ba partially deduced by
the sac_scale: a path with a sac_scale of hiking will be almost surely
suitable also for MTBs, a mountain_hiking one may or may not, and
anything above that is probably off limits.

in the italian mailing list they have just started talking about a
proposal for a similar scale specific for MTBs: that would be of
course better than deducing the information from sac_scale (but it is
still at a very early "it would be nice if" stage)

marking those ways as footways in my opinion would be inadeguate: they
are not made for people on foot, they are made for whatever manages to
use them in some way; most of them aren't even adeguate for the common
pedestrian, since they require at a minimum proper shoes and sometimes
special equipment

to my mind, footway looks more like something specifically made for
the needs of people walking; a mostly urban feature that can be used
even with high heels, wearing dresses, when needing a stick for help,
etc.

of course marking the easier hiking paths as cycleways would be even
more inappropriate: while they may be perfecty fine for a MTB, they
surely cannot be used by a common road bike

the reverse applies: marking a road specifically made for bikes as a
generic path, even with bike=designated would be a waste of perfectly
valid tag and a partial loss of information

as for rendering, imho they shouldn't be treated as footways /
cycleways, but usually in a third similar style; I also think that the
mapnik map can be perfectly fine without them (you don't usually find
hiking paths on city maps), but support for them will be needed in an
hiking map, and i still think that they will be useful in the cyclemap

[1] i.e. those that don't need a road specifically built for their
needs, like most expecially modern vehicles do.

-- 
Elena of Valhalla

homepage: http://www.trueelena.org
email: elena.valhalla at gmail.com