[OSM-talk] Fwd: Nav4All navigation shut down by Navteq

[Richard Fairhurst]

Martin Koppenhoefer wrote:

> well, the chap that first used cycleway might have been an Englishman,
> and might have had in mind that pedestrians are allowed, when tagging
> highway=cycleway, but there is absolutely no logic or "natural
> meaning" for cycleways to deduct access rights for pedestrians. IMHO
> the only thing you can assume is bicycle=yes.

You're missing the point entirely.

It doesn't matter whether the English word "cycleway", as defined by  
the Oxford English Dictionary, implies access rights for pedestrians,  
or for goats, or for St Francis of Assisi.

What matters is the context in which that key/value has been used in  
OSM. And in that case, it's historically been used to imply pedestrian  
rights too.

Exactly analogous to highway=trunk, which, to reiterate, doesn't mean  
a trunk road in Britain.

> As the wiki doesn't speak about implications on foot (or at least  
> most of the time didn't)

Right. This is another reason why the wiki is made of fail. IIRC Map  
Features originally documented that cycleway means shared use,  
reflecting all existing current usage. Some pillock came along and  
edited it to say "mainly for cycles", making it out of step with all  
existing current usage.

Consequently we now have this insane situation where some people are  
following the original usage and others are following the  
wiki-fiddlers' usage. I say "usage", but there's no evidence that  
wiki-fiddlers actually use the tags or in fact do any mapping at all.

cheers
Richard