[OSM-talk] Proliferation of path vs. footway

[Jacek Konieczny]

On Tue, Aug 11, 2009 at 09:12:10AM +1000, Roy Wallace wrote:
> > - Do we tag generic trails as highway=path or does this tag have a more
> > complex meaning?
> 
> I don't think there is any such thing as a "generic trail". I think
> highway=path should simply imply that the way is a physical route used
> for travel but not suitable for cars. Additional tags seem to be
> necessary to describe details, if available.

Then why don't we use just 'highway=road' for any physical route that is
suitable for cars? With your reasoning highway=motorway, highway=trunk,
highway=residental, etc. are unnecessary, as the properties can be
described with other tags…  But we have the another layer of abstraction
and I think it proved useful. We could define motorway by its surface,
width, number of lanes, vehicles which are allowed and which are not,
but this does not make things simple  and would make interpretation of
the map very hard. Classifying ways into
motorways/primary/secondary/residental makes things simpler.

The same should be true for ways useful or dedicated for pedestrians and
cyclists. 

IMHO path should be the same thing for foot/cycleways what a 'track' is
for 4-wheel vehicles. Higher-level ways should be tagged as
footway/cycleway/pedestrian.


Greets,
        Jacek