Folks, Having some time on my hands at the moment, I'm trying to get my head round some of the inconsistencies/duplications/gaps in the usage of the highway key. Having looked at the recent widescale adoption of "highway=path" in Germany it is clearly fulfilling a need. I'm coming to the view that this is a need that we (England and Wales) didn't know existed, because we're used to red dotted lines for country footpaths, and have fallen into using the same tag for rural and urban footpaths, even though they are generally physically quite different. We've therefore lost some of the physical information you get on OS maps, where old hands know to prefer footpaths that follow tracks etc.
In Germany, "highway=path" is being used for paths outside built-up areas that aren't wide enough to be "highway=track", but aren't established enough to be classified as footway, cycleway or bridleway. They are probably also reacting to "footway (fussweg)" being an established term for an urban footpath, and not liguistically appropriate to a rural footpath. Footway is also a defined term in English law, but it's mostly used by highways professionals, and covers urban and rural footpaths and pavements. "highway=path" is also sometimes being used in Germany with bicycle=designated or foot=designated, but this isn't as common. Given a choice between the English system (of using footway in both urban and rural contexts) or the German system (of distinguishing), I think I'm coming to the conclusion that the German system gives a clearer and more accurate coding of the geography, and gives renderers a better basis for making maps. I also think that developing a consensus on how "path" should be used is sensible, to avoid it being used for every type of path, which is currently a danger. There is obviously an issue that we in England and Wales have been merrily tagging rural footpaths as footways for a while. If we move to a situation where path is preferred for most of these, then that's quite a lot of retagging. But having them as highway=footway isn't so terribly wrong in the meantime, so I'd be happy for a slow transition, if the eventual outcome was a clearer and more internationally-adoptable/understandable system. *** I would like feedback/discussion on this particular point - whether urban made-up and rural unmade footpaths should be tagged distinctively *** To summarise & clarify, I'm getting towards: highway=path for unmade/part-made pedestrian ways, typically in rural/woodland settings, or urban shortcuts (implies foot=yes, rest=no) highway=footway for well-made pedestrian ways, typically in urban settings, though sometimes in popular rural/woodland settings (implies foot=yes, rest=no) highway=bridleway for (typically unmade) ways clearly identifiable as for use by horses as well as pedestrians, typically in a rural/woodland setting (implies foot=yes, horse=yes, rest=no) highway=cycleway for ways that have been engineered for "normal" cycles, in both rural and urban settings, but which are less than 2m wide (implies foot=yes, bicycle=yes, rest=no; horse=yes to be added where appropriate) highway=track/unclassified/etc for ways that are at least 2m wide AND designation=footpath/bridleway/restricted_byway/byway/permissive_footpath/permissive_bridleway to record right of way in England & Wales (probably with a default assumption that highway=path implies designation=footpath and highway=bridleway implies designation=bridleway unless tagged otherwise) Richard (West Oxford)
_______________________________________________ Talk-GB mailing list [email protected] http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-gb
