[OSM-talk] Proliferation of path vs. footway

[Roy Wallace]

On Wed, Aug 12, 2009 at 5:06 AM, Craig Wallace<craigw84 at fastmail.fm> wrote:
> On 11/08/2009 09:20, Lauri Kytömaa wrote:
>
> So what about things like mountain bike trails, signed or otherwise?
> There's plenty that I wouldn't advise my mother to cycle on, but I
> wouldn't describe them as a footway. For some of them, it may be not
> recommended to walk along them.
>
> And even if they are signed for mountain biking, I don't think its a
> good idea to tag idea it as a cycleway.

+1. highway=path, again, is a consistent way to tag all kinds of
paths, and is all that is necessary to do so. e.g. highway=path,
mountain_bicycle=yes (or designated - often they're signed) and foot=*
as appropriate.

> Cycleway implies a reasonable
> quality surface and no extreme obstacles etc, and can be used on a
> 'normal' bike.

Not according to the wiki! This is precisely the problem with
highway=cycleway and highway=footway - the tags seem to have an
uncanny ability to lead people to attach all sorts of undocumented
implications. And I suspect this will continue to be a problem until
their use is "discouraged".