[OSM-talk] Proliferation of path vs. footway

[Martin Koppenhoefer]

2009/8/14 Nick Whitelegg <Nick.Whitelegg at solent.ac.uk>:
> On Fri, 2009-08-14 at 13:08 +0200, Nick Whitelegg wrote:
>>> [In Norway you can legally cycle on footways; in England you can't]
>>>
>>> Using the "designated" value appropriately would work with both. In
>>> England, tag with highway=path (or track); foot=designated. In Norway,
> tag
>>> with highway=path (or track); foot=designated; bicycle=designated.
>
>>This doesn't sound quite right to me. If it is signed as a footway in
>>Norway (picture of a pedestrian only, no bike [1]), it is sometimes
>>allowed to cycle there, but only if there are not too many pedestrians
>>and only at walking speed.
>
> Sorry, my comment was based on someone saying that in Norway, bikes could
> use footpaths, and me assuming it was a full legal right. This does make
> things a bit more difficult as I have not come across these sorts of "in
> between" rights before. However I'm not sure that "highway=footway" is the
> answer. Someone should ideally not need knowledge of local laws: as
> someone from the UK I can instantly tell that I'm not supposed to walk on
> German bridleways (see another message) if they are tagged with the
> generic, international tags of foot=no; horse=designated; bicycle=no.
> Likewise someone from Germany, say, can instantly tell that they can walk,
> or cycle, on a UK bridleway.

yes, if you would tag foot=yes, but I guess you usually never did
this, because you thought everybody would know that you could walk
there.

so it comes down to the general observation, that different countries
have different defaults, and how to deal with it. There are 2 main
possibilities:
1. tag on every single way all worldwide thinkable keys
2. document the implicit defaults somewhere in a standardized form, be
it wiki or database

of course, there would also be
3. don't document and refer to local legislation. Therefore it should
be clear how to express local traffic signs in an unambigous way into
tags.
and
4. do 2 in an non-standardized form

but 3 and 4 are not very reliable and practical, e.g. if you wanted to
make a router that works worldwide it would be too timeconsuming to
get all the rules.

cheers,
Martin