On Mon, Feb 23, 2009 at 9:26 AM, Mike Harris <[email protected]> wrote:
> Ed > > I guessed it was a little t-i-c (:>) but as it raised an issue I was > interested in, I took the opportunity to post! > > You have returned the compliment! > > As what might be described as a "footpath worker" (and getting very > involved > outside of OSM in all sorts of footpath issues), when I was a complete OSM > newbie (as opposed to having 'P' plates) I read the wiki avidly and was a > bit surprised to find that the recommendation for UK (should be England and > Wales anyway!) public footpaths (i.e. public rights of way on foot) was > highway=footway plus foot=yes. Whereas imho it should be foot=designated. > But as a newbie I didn't then dare to rock the boat and have now tagged > hundreds of ways with foot=yes! But your first thought seems eminently > sensible - foot=designated where there is a public 'right' of way and > foot=yes where a path is physically capable of being walked on foot. By the > same token, imho, a public bridleway (with 'bridleway' as defined in rights > of way law) should be highway=track plus foot=yes and horse=designated and > (usually - this is a more complex legal issue) bicycle=yes. But the wiki > recommends foot=yes plus horse=yes etc. In short, the wiki > http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/UK_public_rights_of_way doesn't seem to > know about x=designated at all. > > There is a little sentence on the same page that reads: > > "It would be ideal (to ensure your data shows up in renderers) to use the > following combinations of tags." > > So maybe that was why =designated was not used (as I have never used it > myself, I haven't checked the rendering - but then there is the old saw > about not tagging for the renderers!). > > Yet another take on all this is found on > http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Key:access ! > > If we were starting from scratch I would strongly recommend the use of > =designated for public rights of way but, unless someone wants to set up a > new bot, this would require a huge amount of re-tagging (and a bot for the > change would be hard to program unless one had knowledge of the rights of > way status of each and every footway etc.). > > In an ideal and consistent logical world (i.e. not a wiki?!) we would > perhaps use =designated, =permissive and =no for legality, reserving =yes > for physical characteristics enabling the specified type of use (and > perhaps > implying permissive). This would also help with the problem of multi-user > paths that are not public rights of way, such as most cycleways forming > part > of the regional and national networks - foot=permissive, > bicycle=permissive, > motorcar=no, motorcycle=no, horse=??? - as opposed to the cycleways that > are > specifically for cyclists alongside major roads (sometimes split only by a > painted line from a parallel footway) - foot=no, bicycle=designated, etc. > > Where I would really like to see the "old hands" at osm chiming in on this > whole nexus of issues is to provide advice as to how to be logical and > consistent - and yet avoid massive retrospective changes to tagging! > > Where do we go from here! > > Mike > I believe =designated came about at the same time as highway=path, and was part of that proposal. One of the original goals of highway=path was to replace cycleway, footway, bridleway, etc. So, instead of highway=footway, you would tag it highway=path, foot=designated. It has since been moderated as an alternative to those tags when the path usage may not be obvious and also promoted for multi-use paths. Karl
_______________________________________________ talk mailing list [email protected] http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
