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

[Nick Whitelegg]

Sorry, belated reply to this, didn't realise the thread was about this 
topic. I guess I'm the "oldest" of the OSM countryside mappers, having 
been involved in open countryside mapping since Mar 2004 (via my own 
Freemap project, now using OSM data) and OSM since a year later, so...

>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.

This is because "designated" was recommended much more recently than 
"yes", and people (myself included I have to admit) have tended to stick 
with what they were using before.

>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

If you're using "designated" for horse, you'd have to use it for foot too 
as bridleways have legal status for walkers as well as horse riders.

>(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.

Again this is because it predates "designated".



>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.).

Would be OK with me, just change the renderers to equivalence "yes" and 
"designated" for now.

>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.

Nick