An incentive for mappers to survey and add more details. By default, routers won’t direct users through them. Technically, something that appears to be a road might actually be a path, and vice versa—what looks like a path could be a road. This distinction is crucial as an initial step in adding details.
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I can’t see any sensible reason to share a poll in a specific country forum internationally. This tagging is primarily only relevant for Austria in exactly the requested signposting. It makes as much sense as canvassing for votes in the Federal Council elections (Nationalratswahl) in other countries.
Why not introduce highway=cycle_footpath for paths signed with an appropriate traffic_sign?
Can’t that be achieved with fixme tags?
For rendering purposes, it can’t be used without a top-level tag. Actually, highway=road already functions as fixme=survey, so no additional fixme tag is needed.
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I did not invite people to vote, did anybody do that? In an international forum, it might make sense to remind, that not all over the world path is used to tell, that a feature only received little improvement. The poll results show that path is consciously used to map highly improved infrastructure. Especially shared use one, and that is the least common ground between jurisdictions/traffic codes, whether signs exist or not.
PS: Personally, I also preferred MTB trails rather mapped path than cycleway. But I cannot really explain, why that is superior. At least not in a stringent manner.
Please excuse me if I have misunderstood… English is not my native language, but I translate the wording ‘invited to join a poll’ as … “eingeladen, an einer Umfrage teilzunehmen” or also “zur Teilnahme an einer Umfrage eingeladen”. How would you translate or understand that?
A cycleway is a road for bicycles.
A mountain bike trail is a path for bicycles.
I’m not sure how much clearer we can be.
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Yet a road for bicycles has its own first-order tag and the mountain bike trail does not. Maybe, just maybe, that is the source of confusion?
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This distinction makes sense to me. There are more road-like, well constructed, generally smooth, gravel or paved ways for bicycles. Then there are more path-like ways for bicycles that are only minimally constructed. However, this distinction may require more words than simply stating “road vs path”.
Unfortunately in common language (at least in North American English), the more road-like ways are called “bike path”, “shared-use path”, and other variants of “* path”. They are also not thought of as a road or street in the typical sense, but rather as a side path along a road, or a distinct path separate from any road (i.e. the bike path does not provide primary access to any addresses). So the distinction between a bicycle road and a bicycle path will likely be far from clear to the layperson.
The above is admittedly a North American cultural viewpoint. In other countries this distinction may be clearer. As I understand it, in the Netherlands a cycleway can be considered a road/street and provide primary access to to addresses which bear the name of the bicycle road.
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With that in mind, rough unpaved roads connecting settlements would be tagged highway=track instead of highway=unclassified/tertiary because they’re more like a ‘track’ for high-clearance vehicles.
On the other hand, a smooth, paved agricultural road would get tagged highway=unclassified because it looks like a regular ‘road.’
I’m in the camp that thinks roads and paths should be classified by how they’re used, not just how they look. There are plenty of other tags to describe surface and suitability of specific vehicles including all categories of bicycles.
If a cycleway is meant to describe paths used primarily or exclusively by cyclists (in the legal sense), I don’t see why technically it could not be used for a mtb-only trail.
To use your rubric -
A bike path (cycleway) and mtb trail are used completely differently. The only thing they have in common is both use some type of bicycle.
MTB trails are used recreationally full stop. cycleway are primarily part of the transportation network. Nobody is wearing a business suit and riding their bicycle to work on an MTB trail.
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I’d be all for that, but how to persuade the people that draw the distinction like: If it is multiple use it is path, if it is single use it is cycle- or footway? From what I know, this is the way it is documented in the Wiki and embodied into editors (perhaps regionally inconclusive.)
I’d say, that would put them out of highway=* key space. I do not think that workable.
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That doesn’t make sense. A large number of highway=path objects are used primarily recreationally. The highway=* key is fine for paths and trails of all kinds. Maybe scramble is different enough from a path that it can get its own value but even that is debatable.
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Adn there I thought it has been demonstrated that the idea that a paved 4m wide smooth way for pedestrians and cyclists and invisible difficult_alpine_hiking sharing one value is just silly.
This! While a mountain bike and a road bike are both types or kinds of bicycles, the roads they can travel on have properties that aren’t symmetrical. That is, while one can also ride an MTB on a =cycleway, the converse does not hold. You can’t ride a roadie on a way constructed or intended for MTBs.
Secondly, I think there is some confusion between a path “purposely constructed [for] MTB[s]” mentioned by @Hungerburg above, and a “shared-use path” @ezekielf mentions. If there is a path that is contained in a fenced-off part of a park or forest enforceably meant only to MTBs, it might deserve a “first-order” tag for MTBs (probably in the sport= namespace, and an mtb:scale= of > 1 or 2). All other =paths—whether merely suitable or constructed—for MTBs are also available for hikers.
I do hail from Finland and we have Nordic style Freedom to Roam laws, so that may skew my perspective: here it would be all but impossible to legally forbid people from walking on paths constructed for MTBs, unless they are built on private land and physically fenced off for others.
For both reasons I think a “first-order” highway= tag for MTBs is out of the question.
I do hail from Finland and we have Nordic style Freedom to Roam laws, so that may skew my perspective: here it would be all but impossible to legally forbid people from walking on paths constructed for MTBs, unless they are built on private land and physically fenced off for others.
what about motorways, does freedom to roam entitle pedestrians to hike on them?
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This opinion kinda aligns with the inclusion of MTB paths into the path/way=* subcategories (2nd post in this thread).
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I suppose so. My main gripe is moving very vehicle-specific tags to top-level status. Like MTB stuff, and similarly vehicle-type-specific information. To me, that just doesn’t make sense (for the reasons I mentioned above).
The point is that in this thread we are talking about solutions for ways that are now tagged =path. Those are already multi-purpose by default. This also relates somewhat to the confusion @dieterdreist had.
I can see how having more top-level tags replacing the (very general and wide-ranging) =path value might perhaps be useful. However, the criteria for those tags would have to be mainly physical. I.e., functionally the new top-level tags would be “templates” that cover a variety of descriptive tags (and their specific values) directly into the main tag. Of course this enterprise is not without serious problems of its own (particularly if we preserve the =path category. But this has been hashed over many times elsewhere)
I’m going to go ahead and assume that this question is sincere and made with best intentions. The answer is: no. If you think about it for a while, it’s not difficult to figure out why (see a further hint in my answer above). Google and Wikipedia are your friends here.
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In some parts of the US, it is legal to ride a bicycle on a motorway (Interstate highway). However, this does not make them a cycleway.