> On Aug 3, 2015, at 6:07 PM, Richard Mann <richard.mann.westoxf...@gmail.com>
> wrote:
>
> highway=path should be a rough path
> highway=footway should be a made-up path with limited room for non-foot
> traffic (eg bicycles), or an explicit ban
> highway=cycleway should be a made-up path with good room for bicycles (given
> other usage)
+1
I DO NOT WANT path & footway merged - we need to be able to show rough/informal
paths. There are sidewlks that go up mountains, and trails that go up
mountains. they are completely different, and merging the values together to be
defined by subkeys is a terrible idea. we don’t define motorways and
residential roads with the same value, and a rough path through the woods or an
informal cut in the grass along some train tracks is not a sidewalk through a
park or a footbridge over an intersection.
As I understand it from reading bits of wiki and mailing lists (Please correct
if wrong.):
From all the history, it looks like path was made to show some kind of mixed
use way that footway was not good at - for mapping useful but unpaved and
irregular pathways - trails, tracks, etc. A guy was pushing for this as useful
for horses, I think.
Then Track showed up, taking a lot of the path’s job for things like farming
roads, fire roads, and other mixed use roads.
Also, there’s bridleway, paths designated for horses. And cycleway too. I don’t
know when they showed up, but it seems later than path.
This leaves path to a more “rough, informal, unpaved, and/or sporadically
maintained” role, narrowed down over time.
This discussion is the result of the old definition of path clashing with it’s
clearly smaller (but important) role. final step to officially narrowing path’s
focus to a more limited role.
~
I find 3-5 year old data imports where paths are marked that are clearly
farming tracks or service roads (bridges!) and I retag them as appropriate. I
use paths for hiking trails through forests, irregular narrow dirt paths
through parks or along rivers (that brach off paved ways that are footways),
and other official or in-use paths that are not paved or have a
rough/impassible surface for a wheelchair, therefore not defacto "designated"
for easy/effortless foot traffic and other uses (like a sidewalk). This is
informal path / maintained trail / line cut through the grass is a great use
for path.
We really need an easily defined highway=path and a separate highway=footway.
And the above does it very very well.
Javbw
_______________________________________________
Tagging mailing list
Tagging@openstreetmap.org
https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/tagging
