I think I agree with what Kevin is saying, but I confess I'm not sure
what the problem is. In my area, even looking at a nearby big city,
most of the 'paths' are dirt trails. There are some cycleways too.
I'm not sure anyone maps sidewalks.
I think the fundamental problem is the original redundant
footpath/cycleway/bridleway/path tags. Trying to use the function
instead of the physical characteristics. It works for roads, but not
for multiuser trails.
Someone asked what the hierarchy is. Trails don't usually have a
hierarchy like roads do.
Someone discussed purposely built paths vs naturally created trails.
This doesn't work. A lot of new trails are being built and they are
designed and built by man and machine. In steep terrain many old
naturally created trails are eroded and rutted and closed down, or
rerouted, or maintained by volunteers.
On 5/25/20 11:51 AM, Kevin Kenny wrote:
Let me reiterate that the subkey that's needed is actually the one
that asserts 'this IS what one would expect of an urban or suburban
footway', rather than 'this is a relatively unimproved "natural"
trail'. We already have many attributes that would indicate that a
trail might be relatively unimproved (`surface=ground`; `incline=*`;
`wheelchair=no`; `width=*`, `smoothness=*`, `sac_scale=*` and so on).
The fundamental problem is that it is not safe to draw any conclusion
from the absence of such a tag. A mapper may have tagged a wilderness
trail as `highway=path` or `highway=footway` and simply not added the
other attributes.
The best way to help the data consumer will be to have a tagging
scheme that allows asserting 'this IS an urban/suburban/front-country
footpath' as well as 'this is a relatively unimproved trail'. It's
true at the start that providing such a thing will leave most
`highway=path` features ambiguous, but it at least would open a way
forward for disambiguating them. `path=trail` will NOT accomplish that
goal, because it still leaves two choices: 'this is a trail', and
'this is unknown/ambiguous'.
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