[OSM-talk] Proliferation of path vs. footway

[Mike Harris]

... but, rightly or wrongly, I do not think I am alone in using
highway=footway for all paths intended primarily for pedestrians whether
urban or rural, designated or not, designation=anything - the only real
exception I make is (mostly) in rural areas where the path is clearly
informal and of undefined status, where I would use highway=path.

I arrive at this after a very long recycle of messages earlier on in this
same discussion group and it is also consistent with
http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/UK_public_rights_of_way .

Please understand that I am not arguing a case here - merely recording what
I currently do and why I do it. Once again it would appear that there are
inconsistencies both in practice and within the different pages of the wiki.
This is not surprising but it does, understandably, give rise to confusion
and to lengthy discussions (witness the length of this thread).

How to resolve?

Mike Harris

-----Original Message-----
From: Nick Whitelegg [mailto:Nick.Whitelegg at solent.ac.uk] 
Sent: 17 August 2009 09:14
To: Roy Wallace
Cc: talk at openstreetmap.org
Subject: Re: [OSM-talk] Proliferation of path vs. footway

>>> Whitelegg<Nick.Whitelegg at solent.ac.uk> wrote:
>>>> In the UK I would tag such a path as
foot=designated;bicycle=permissive;
>>>> and pragmatically highway=footway for the moment, using the 
>>>> generally-accepted definition of "footway" as "urban surfaced path"
>>>> (though would prefer highway=path; surface=paved)
>>>
>>> That is not the definition of footway. highway=footway is "For 
>>> designated footpaths, i.e. mainly/exclusively for pedestrians."
>>
>> that's the recent wiki recommendation, but I guess footway is far 
>> older than this definition from Jan 08. Don't know how many footways 
>> have been in the  db till then and how many were added afterwards not 
>> corresponding to this definition, but might be lots ;-)


>Sure, but perpetuating deprecated definitions via the mailing list 
>without specifically indicating them as such (deprecated) is IMHO 
>damaging.

My comment on "footway" meaning "urban surfaced path" was based on many
recent mailing list discussions which seem to indicate that there was a
tendency to use "footway" for urban paths and "path" for mud/dirt/rock paths
in the countryside. Based on that perceived tendency, plus my own
preferences, that's what I've been doing recently.

Nick