Hi Folks,
I am contemplating a review of 'walking tracks' tagging in Tasmania, outside of urban areas. In my case I am starting with tracks that are exclusively for foot traffic. My investigation has led me to what appears to be a conflict within OSM of what is the correct tagging to use. https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Tag:highway%3Dpath would suggest that most could be a 'path' and this seems to be verified on existing data with this styled overpass query (by bounding box) https://overpass-turbo.eu/s/1fGX * Blue represents a path * Red represents a footway * Black represents steps The path tag also considers extra tagging such as the sac_scale, visibility, surface, operator etc etc which is useful extra information. Sac_scale and operator are certainly used less frequently on footway. The footway tagging https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Tag:highway%3Dfootway seems to have been written with urban infrastructure in mind and as usual for OSM tagging does not provide definitive detail (ie it could have said 'used exclusively by pedestrians', instead it say mainly or exclusively). Of course there are always cases on the margins of both and an example would be a high use, possibly with disabled access, tracks such as Russell Falls in Tasmania (to highlight one that is likely known by many) https://overpass-turbo.eu/s/1fGZ So that brings me to the recently created Australian Walking Track page https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Australia/Walking_Tracks which gives the options to use both tags (path and footway) but without any real qualification about choosing between the two. This still seems to be in conflict with the Australian tagging guidelines on Bushwalking (and cycling tracks) https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Australian_Tagging_Guidelines#Bush_Walki ng_and_Cycling_Tracks that definitively says 'Do not use highway=footway'. So my question is - do you think we can come up with some criteria where a footway ends and path commences or should we just go with the flow and stick with OSM <https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Any_tags_you_like> 'any tags you like'? My main goal is to make sure the two Australian wikis are not in conflict with each other. I am aware there is some controversy re footway/pathway and bikes but I would like to ignore that in this context Cheers - Phil
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