Generic vs. intuitive use of highway=path

I am confused now. I always thought the main dilemma/ambiguity is that hw=path can bei either a general base for mixed use (wiki definition, usually a well maintained way wide enough for vehicles) or a single trail path (intuitive use, hiking path only usable on foot, MTB, horse).
I think that main dilemma needs to be resolved first before thinking about subdividing single trail paths further, especially since there already is via_ferrata for actual climbing paths.

I always had the idea that in a perfect world it could work like this:
hw=path - mixed use of constructed/maintained ways
hw=trail - replaces path for single trail paths, further described with sac_scale, mtb_scale, horse_scale
hw=via_ferrata

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I did some quantitative digging in my small province:

Highway Tag Length Length
trunk 102 km 0,20 %
cycleway 333 km 0,64 %
motorway 364 km 0,70 %
tertiary 712 km 1,37 %
footway 857 km 1,65 %
secondary 869 km 1,68 %
primary 963 km 1,86 %
unclassified 1760 km 3,40 %
residential 3601 km 6,95 %
service 4755 km 9,18 %
path 15279 km 29,48 %
track 22228 km 42,89 %
Total 51823 km 100,00 %
Path plus
bicycle=designated 216 km 0,42 %
foot=designated 141 km 0,27 %
both=designated 118 km 0,23 %
Cycleway plus
foot=designated 60 km 0,12 %

From these numbers, 98% or so of path will become trail.

Apart this shows: The classes leading up to path in total 27,62%, so less than path alone. Only two primary tags make up for two third of highways.

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I’m sorry, but that’s like saying that a track road is already there for motorways. One does climb on it, right. Via ferrata is a specific and a totally different type of climbing than, well, climbing (Klettersteig vs Klettern) or scrambling.


vs

They should definitely not be confused, in particular because they require (mandate!) different equipment to be used and this can be a matter of life and death

This would be an interesting addition. But it still leaves plenty of undefined “paths”, as listed in

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Above I used ohsome dashboard to get at the numbers, in my area about two to three percent of what is highway=path likely to be shared use paths. This is just a small area though (Tyrol). So I looked at taginfo for Austria:

5.6% of path has foot=designated and 4.76 has bicycle=designated, 4.3% has segregated – that a sure indicator, that this is a shared use path. (Beware: above numbers in km, taginfo numbers in mapped entities.) The numbers would push me to push for something like:

As clearly can be seen the reason why path was introduced in the beginning, to make it possible to map multi-use features

(and single-use features the same), is drowned by other mappings. No wonder, the access default for path in Austria for bicycle is “dismount”, because paths only exist in the woods (so the reasoning there.) Personally, I’d rather opt for hw=trail instead for the masses, because the mup’s align much better with foot_scale=casual, sac_scale=strolling, &c.

I recently learned, in the Netherlands there are paths (pad) 8+m wide and paved; so even if the term path for that was unintuitive in my area, at least it is intuitive in other parts of the world.

For English natives, path and trail might ring the same, but if it was for openstreetmap’s ontology that they are different, I’d say, why not?

I don’t think that was the intention of Nop. There are already main tags different than highway=path existing on the “upper end”. highway=via_ferrata and climbing=*. I hope that’s not under discussion.
On the “lower end” we have “maintained ways”, ranging from sidewalks, cycleways, briddle ways and covering as well maintained ways for normal, easy hiking or off-road cycling. I hope those are as well not under discussion and covered by highway=footway,cycleway,briddleway,track,path.

Leftover are unmaintained ways. There are “unofficial” versions (shortcuts,…) of the above ways and there are “trails”.

So if we would have two new values of the key highway, wouldn’t that be enough separation? (Or highway=path & path=maintained,unofficial,trail)

For sure, the “trails”-section would be still have quite some range, though as the main aim is to get all of them out of “general purpose maps” that will be fine and “special maps” anyway would need to check for mtb:scale or sac_scale

Though, this is an international/general discussion, so we should consider the international defaults as basics. :wink:

No. Because this is openstreetmap after all. local peculiarities govern!

For sure you in Austria can decide about local defaults, but that doesn’t effect the rest of the world. If you want to find a global solution, you need to consider first global defaults and afterwards you can figure out, what that means for your local defaults. It’s not going to work out the other way around. “path is only for pedestrians” doesn’t apply for the majority of OSM.

If you only aim for an Austrian solution, you might better discuss this in the Austrian category :wink:

So you are assuming that shared use paths are likely to be tagged as designated for foot and bicycle?

How do you see the way in these photos? All are taken within a short distance. Signs prohibit motor vehicles and horses. By implication the path is intended to be shared by cyclists and pedestrians (and in reality is popular with both). But there are no signs explicitly “designating” it for anyone. Not a blue circle sign to be seen anywhere in the area.

Do you see this as not a shared use path because of the lack of designation? Or is it in fact shared use, implying that there could be am unquantifiable number of these hidden within the highway=path tagging?



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These are excellent pictures for documenting what should be moved from path to shared_use or similar.

I took them just before posting! Could probably have brightened them up a bit first.

I genuinely am not sure where they would fall, a lot of people seem to emphasise the concept of designation, and indeed the starting point of the original path proposal seemed to assume that designation was already implied in footway and cycleway. But often you can tell access rights only by what is left over when you subtract the prohibited mode of transport, which feels more like access=yes than designated.

For completeness, these are actually tagged as footway with bicycle=yes currently. That may be influenced by the wooden bridge section, where signs indicate pedestrian priority. But that is the only visible differentiation between the two modes.

Judging from the traffic sign, I would tag it as:

highway=track/service
vehicle=private
lanes=1

So no path at all and bicycles are not allowed.

Yes, at least, when I read the term in a post referring to Wiki documentation and that would then be the German one. I understand from the article: Shared use is a technical term exactly for ways explicitly and officially signed. Others are unspecific use.

The German map style renders paths and foot/cycleways differently. From panning around a bit in my area, ways as in your picture mostly mapped footway not path. The bottom one likely as a track. Actually, we do not have many such ways even though a highly touristic place. Walking and cycling routes reuse agricultural and forestry infrastructure a lot.

A specification for a “mup” (multi-use-path) that will include weaker forms of designation in your pictures certainly will make more sense than strictly mapping signs. But classification will get trickier.

And foot=yes, I can see nothing to prohibit pedestrians

judging from the text under the sign, I would probably go for bicycle permissive, especially if it is commonly used by cyclist as was mentioned. If I get it right, it allows authorized motor vehicles, sounds to me they were just sloppy with not using the sign only barring motorized vehicles.

Does it? From my short samples, highway=path + bicycle=designated is rendered the same as highway=cycleway i.e. white with a purple border and I assume highway=path + foot=designated without bicycle=designated is rendered the same as a highway=footway.
It’s only those without any designations that highway=path is rendered as dashes regardless of its surface.

Indeed, probably because highway=path;bicycle=designated is understood to be the very same as highway=cycleway by the people designing the map style? The shared use ones with foot=designated too also render as cycleways :wink: These shared use paths account for 0.77% of all paths in my area (by length, measured in ohsome dashboard.)

Alan rightly wanted to point at the hidden shared use paths, that have no designation mapped. Only comparing the map signature with what one knows there on the ground can reveal them. The German map style better suited for that than OSM-Carto.

PS: I do not think that using a weaker form of designation will bring shared use out of low single digit share here. Paths with no signs abound in the woods and there by default not open for cycling or horse riding. @aighes Not that any routers would adhere to that merely local default :wink:

Again that contrasts with what I am used to. Here, I’d generally expect prohibitions on cycling or horse rising to be signed. Coincidentally, very near the photos I posted earlier, there is a separate path through a nature reserve, where prohibitions on cycling, scooters, and horses are signed explicitly. Whereas I’ve seen areas defined as “Parque Forestal” or “Monte Público” that post general prohibitions on motor vehicles, so that any unsigned paths are by default “not prohibited” for walking, cycling, or riding, and may well be mapped as highway=path without tags.

That might be the case in your area. But not everywhere in the world. It would help, if you could acknowledge that. The “law” you are talking about is pretty much limited to central Europe. If in Austria highway=path is used differently than in the “rest of the world”, that’s ok. But this problem you need to solve than in Austria.
Globally highway=path is shared use. No need to find another tag for this.

I am from Central Europe (well, I think Central Europe is not a thing, but let’s keep tha discussion for some other forum) and here I think if a path in a wood is unsigned, it is open to cyclists and horses. But I might not be knowledgeable about the law.

There has been a lot of discussion that path means so much and so litle a the same time (and the meaning differs in different parts of the planet). Shared use as defined by Wikipedia is a small subset of paths out there.