The discussion should continue here, but the results can be documented on a wiki page - for starters even in a user namespace
Discourse does a lot of things that no-one understands 
. I can think of a couple of reasons why there might be a problem - Iâve asked the global moderators if there is anything that they can do.
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Nope, this true. I deliberately said that you canât talk about all countries, because there is a very wide range and difference worldwide. I know its not the case in France, but in Europe there are countries that ban bicycles on paths (e.g. Austria, Switzerland or Italy (although there are exceptions at state level, in any case very complicated 
)). And some rely on visitor management (i.e. encouraging MTB to use only certain paths (i.e. single tracks)), as some users have already mentioned.
The beauty of mtb-single-track would be that only countries/states/areas where MTB and hikers are separated could use it, the rest could ignore it.
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Kind of. OSM tagging documentation is very much âbeware of the leopardâ and I donât think itâs realistic for data consumers to understand every single ever-changing nuance.
I probably take more notice of tagging intricacies for cycle.travel than anyone else does (except perhaps @SomeoneElse), and even I get caught out regularly because someone has decided to invent a new exciting way of tagging something that has been perfectly well mapped for the last 15 years.
right, but mtb:scale is one of those established tags, its usage is heading towards a million and it has been around for the last 15 years: https://taginfo.openstreetmap.org/keys/mtb:scale#chronology
if people are made aware of these lost ânuancesâ in their rendering and choose to ignore the problem, it is their complete right, but maybe not very wise and could be given a second thought.
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Presence or absence of mtb:scale does not tell you whether a trail is mtb_single_track. Nor do access tags, really, if use in the legalistic meaning (which si the official meaning).
For completeness, when the suggestion about inferring path state from mtb:scale was mentioned the first or perhaps second time (Iâve lost count), I did have a look (in UK/IE) at the correlation between the value of that and ways that I was already classifying as âgoodâ, âintermediateâ or âbadâ based on a bunch of other OSM tags, and basically there was no correlation. I agree that mtb:scale is an established tag, and I use it myself to try and warn cyclists of something that might be legal but inappropriate, but its usage is unreliable enough that you canât make other predictions based on it.
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I am not sure what you mean by âgoodâ, etc. I am not surprised that there was no correlation. mtb:scale only tells you how difficult it is to ride a bike on the path/trail. Some mtb:scale=3 or 4 can be quite smooth (tight, steep, turns can make them difficult, as can wood features, wall rides, drastic change in elevation, etc.), they can be quite narrow, or quite wide, visibility is usually excellent, but not alwaysâŠ
Why not encourage mappers to use it then? Why do we think the proposed new tag(s) will be used reliably when existing tags are not?
If the problem is that people are venturing onto difficult paths/trails with their road bikes, it solves the problem.
I absolutely do think that mappers should use it, and in fact more downstream data consumers for it beyond the usual suspects should hopefully cement its use.
I donât believe that new tags added to highway=path will be used better by mappers or data consumers less familiar with the intricacies of OSM tagging than existing tags such as sac_scale, mtb:scale etc. I do believe that it makes sense to split off parts of what are now tagged in some places as highway=path as something else altogether, because âthey are not in any normal sense pathsâ. However, I recognise that in some quarters the "⊠but Iâve always tagged these as highway=path feeling! is strong, and any such move wonât happen overnight.
At the same time I absolutely think that capturing information in other tags makes sense (hence these QA links on my wiki page).
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No, part of the problem is that people on foot enter those paths and can be endangered.
Maybe because one could armchair-map those 60 km of trails with mtb_single_track but not mtb_scale.
I have seen that too, highway=cycleway and mtb:scale=3. These pathways were especially constructed to appeal to downhill mountain-biking, a sport done with pedal cycles, so they fulfil the design pattern, furthermore they are signposted for exclusive cycling use, and last but not least they are designated by the creators and blessed by the authorities/contracting parties for that single use. If I fully understand, in Germany hw=path+bicycle=designated is more stringent than highway=cycleway in that it requires round blue signs, but Germany is not all over the world. So, why not?
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Iâve actually reserved the second post for something and this seems to be it.
I will turn it into a wiki post and we can set that up as the proposal work-in-progress post until it is time for the next stage.
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no - cycleway and path with bicycle=designated have (in Germany) the same meaning. Some mappers use explicit bicycle=designated only when a blue sign is present.
But this is a controversal in using bicycle=yes vs. bicycle=designated an not about cycleway vs path.
- path is used for for all kinds of multi-purpose (foot+cycle)ways (JOSM preset)
- cycleway is mostly only used for pure cycleway (with implicit foot=no) (JOSM) but sometimes also like the ID-template for combined foot+cycleways
There has been a lot of statements about duck tagging in respective topics here, some affirmative, some pejorative. I want to introduce a new term:
duck rendering : If it quacks like a cycleway â
highway=path; foot=no; bicycle=designatedâ then render as a cyclecway.
Regardless of mtb:scale 
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@bradrh Hmm, wondering what the thumbs down tells me: You find it fine, that a renderer disregards mtb:scale when showing single use MTB downhill races as ordinary cycle paths?
An MTB trail is not a cycleway. A cycleway is a smooth path suitable for a road bike
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Tell that to people who think that the only meaning of cycleway is that it has a sign saying it is meant for bikes. If a MTB trail has a sign, it must be a cycleway :-D.
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like here Way: âȘGroĂe Table-Line⏠(âȘ1012156960âŹ) | OpenStreetMap
or here Way: âȘMountainbike-Trail Ă30⏠(âȘ35929980âŹ) | OpenStreetMap
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Isnât that the whole point of why weâre having these discussions?
If all you have is a hammer, you know what happens next.
We need more subcategories for the path. Then it will be possible to distinguish different types of MTB trails.
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Well, maybe. We do have mtb:scale as a tag that data consumers can use when deciding how to show MTB and cycle trails, but we know that out of lack of information, technical limitations** or laziness, many wonât.
** as a potential example of that, v1.0 of the Shortbread schema doesnât include it. Thatâs not really a bug, since you canât include everything.