[OSM-talk] amenity=doctor or amenity=doctors ? [tagging]

[Karl Newman]

On Mon, Feb 23, 2009 at 9:26 AM, Mike Harris <mikh43 at googlemail.com> wrote:

> Ed
>
> I guessed it was a little t-i-c (:>) but as it raised an issue I was
> interested in, I took the opportunity to post!
>
> You have returned the compliment!
>
> As what might be described as a "footpath worker" (and getting very
> involved
> outside of OSM in all sorts of footpath issues), when I was a complete OSM
> newbie (as opposed to having 'P' plates) I read the wiki avidly and was a
> bit surprised to find that the recommendation for UK (should be England and
> Wales anyway!) public footpaths (i.e. public rights of way on foot) was
> highway=footway plus foot=yes. Whereas imho it should be foot=designated.
> But as a newbie I didn't then dare to rock the boat and have now tagged
> hundreds of ways with foot=yes! But your first thought seems eminently
> sensible - foot=designated where there is a public 'right' of way and
> foot=yes where a path is physically capable of being walked on foot. By the
> same token, imho, a public bridleway (with 'bridleway' as defined in rights
> of way law) should be highway=track plus foot=yes and horse=designated and
> (usually - this is a more complex legal issue) bicycle=yes. But the wiki
> recommends foot=yes plus horse=yes etc. In short, the wiki
> http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/UK_public_rights_of_way doesn't seem to
> know about x=designated at all.
>
> There is a little sentence on the same page that reads:
>
> "It would be ideal (to ensure your data shows up in renderers) to use the
> following combinations of tags."
>
> So maybe that was why =designated was not used (as I have never used it
> myself, I haven't checked the rendering - but then there is the old saw
> about not tagging for the renderers!).
>
> Yet another take on all this is found on
> http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Key:access !
>
> If we were starting from scratch I would strongly recommend the use of
> =designated for public rights of way but, unless someone wants to set up a
> new bot, this would require a huge amount of re-tagging (and a bot for the
> change would be hard to program unless one had knowledge of the rights of
> way status of each and every footway etc.).
>
> In an ideal and consistent logical world (i.e. not a wiki?!) we would
> perhaps use =designated, =permissive and =no for legality, reserving =yes
> for physical characteristics enabling the specified type of use (and
> perhaps
> implying permissive). This would also help with the problem of multi-user
> paths that are not public rights of way, such as most cycleways forming
> part
> of the regional and national networks - foot=permissive,
> bicycle=permissive,
> motorcar=no, motorcycle=no, horse=??? - as opposed to the cycleways that
> are
> specifically for cyclists alongside major roads (sometimes split only by a
> painted line from a parallel footway) - foot=no, bicycle=designated, etc.
>
> Where I would really like to see the "old hands" at osm chiming in on this
> whole nexus of issues is to provide advice as to how to be logical and
> consistent - and yet avoid massive retrospective changes to tagging!
>
> Where do we go from here!
>
> Mike
>

I believe =designated came about at the same time as highway=path, and was
part of that proposal. One of the original goals of highway=path was to
replace cycleway, footway, bridleway, etc. So, instead of highway=footway,
you would tag it highway=path, foot=designated. It has since been moderated
as an alternative to those tags when the path usage may not be obvious and
also promoted for multi-use paths.

Karl
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