A lot of good comments here. My motivation for bringing this up is
for clarity and consistency, and to make it easier for new mappers to
get involved. As stated in the wiki, a multiuse path could be tagged
as path, cycleway, footway, or bridleway (and maybe other things too)
I can see historical and local reasons for various uses. This is
redundant and confusing for mappers and renderers, but so be it, I won't
try to change it. I certainly won't be changing any tags in other
countries, or even any regions in the US far from me.
It would be nice to have some consistency withing the US though wouldn't
it? It usually is, and the comments reflect that, but I have come
across 1 trail, and 1 trail network, both are rugged hiking/mtb/horse
trails that were tagged as cycleways. I changed them to path, and it
would be nice if I could reference a wiki to back up my change.
Without inventing anything country specific (re:Rihards), or conflicting
with the wiki, I think we could come up with guidelines and translations
that would help us be consistent.
I could try to put a table in, but not sure how it would come out in
various email readers, so consider this table with ":" separators
OSM tag ; common US name : definition
path ; single track/trail/path ; multiuse dirt path including motorized,
further specified with other tags
footway ; sidewalk/hiker only trail ; pedestrian only sidewalk or path
cycleway ; bike path ; paved path, open to bikes, & I've never seen one
that wasn't open to pedestrian too
bridleway ; horse trail ; path open only to horses (I think these are
uncommon, hiker/horse trails are common & these would be better tagged
as path with bicycle:no
[Notice that these all could be handled with the path tag and sub tags]
I haven't included roads because they seem to be tagged pretty
consistently, and the wiki is better.
I realize it would be nice to use the surface tag & I will use that on
all trails where it makes sense, but so far I haven't found a
highway:path that was paved.
I think this is consistent with the way most US mappers are doing it,
and also consistent with the way the renderers are handling it
(openfietsmap and openandromap for example). If others in other
regions of the US
I was talking to a local friend (who is mostly a dirt biker) who is
getting started with OSM and he said there isn't anything for a trail,
I pointed out that there was a path tag, but I understand his
confusion. Looking at the wiki, the picture for path looks like a very
wide trail, but the description seems to encourage footway, cycleway or
bridleway instead. It would be nice if new mappers didn't get
discouraged by the confusion.
On 4/19/19 8:28 AM, brad wrote:
Everywhere I've been in the US or Canada a dirt 'way' too narrow for a
4 wheel vehicle is called a trail, path, or single track. For the most
part they are appropriately (IMO) tagged as path. Unfortunately the
wiki says this for highway:path (the highlighting is mine):
/A non-specific path. //*Use **highway=footway
<https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Tag:highway%3Dfootway>**for paths
mainly for walkers, **highway=cycleway
<https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Tag:highway%3Dcycleway>**for one
also usable by cyclists, **highway=bridleway
<https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Tag:highway%3Dbridleway>**for
ones available to horse riders as well as walkers *//and
//highway=track
<https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Tag:highway%3Dtrack>//for ones
which is passable by agriculture or similar vehicles./
I think it makes no sense to call a dirt path, open to more than 1
user group, anything other than a path. Since about 98% of the
trail tagging that I've seen seems to agree, Is there consensus on
this? Perhaps if the international group likes the description as
is, a clarification on the US road tagging wiki page?
https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/United_States_roads_tagging
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