I wish people new to this path-saga would not use “we have always done it this way” and “there are secondary tags, nothing is broken, move on” as the only arguments for keeping the status quo. Particularly as the many fellow posters here spend a lot of energy proving that things are broken.
In a nutshell:
highway=pathhas so broad scope that it is practically useless in its bare form to deduce practical suitability of the way in question.- many routers and renderers, particularly general-purpose ones, currently do not consume those secondary tags, of which there are too many (
sac_scale,smoothness,surface,incline,width,informal, …) - many mappers do not have time and inclination to add those secondary tags, which would often require re-surveying
- as a result, people using the map get stranded, lost or hurt
- one proposed solution was to introduce another
highwaytag and retag most difficult/invisible trails so as to immediately remove them from general-purpose maps. That would not happen overnight, and hiking apps would presumably consume those first. - there are other proposed solutions (refining
path=)…
…but please do not pretend as if the problem does not exist. Yeah, it may not be pronounced in relatively mellow topography of Great Britain, but in countries featuring more wild and rugged areas, it’s a thing.