I spotted highway=via_ferrata which is in relatively wide use, seems to make sense and partially solves a known problem (see ten gambillion threads about highway=path) but is not included in for example iD presets.
I am considering making PR to add it - would it be bad idea for some reason?
I am asking as it was suggested to me to ask on forum before making a PR to tagging presets.
Note: feel free to make a PR for it in iD presets, I am not reserving it. At the current rate if I will get around doing it by 2027 things went well.
Depending on point of view, highway=via_ferrata indeed a bad idea. A number of consumers treat anything highway=* as routable for at least pedestrian traffic. In effect highway=via_ferrata severely damages the comprehensibility of the highway key On the other hand, a lot of consumers seem to be aware of that, what in openstreetmap is called a highway, not necessarily a highway in common parlance.
One prominent routing provider that I contacted seems to have taken note and implemented a fix (curiously they asked, why those via ferratas not paths with an additional ferrata attribute, because that the way it should be.) Another prominent router is aware of the highway=unknown issue since 2023, but I think it will take them at least until 2027 to get at it.
Those routers should be considered to be broken then. Routing pedestrians over anything with a highway key simply doesnât work, and not just because of via_ferrata.
Ehh, since itâs a separate top level value itâs not really an issue for data consumers (besides those that are already broken as noted above). Itâs not a troll tag on highway=path that would silently break things. THAT would be a real issue.
If you consider this a problem (like I said, I donât think it is), then the same would apply to Proposal:Highway=scramble - OpenStreetMap Wiki.
Itâs a moot point in any case. highway=via_ferrata is a well established tag and canât really be changed anymore, even if we wanted to.
I think itâs controversial for the same reasons as highway=steps or highway=ladder: it sits between two opposing views â whether features like this should be expressed with subkeys or introduced as new top-level highway=* values for convenience. Adding it as an iD preset would likely reopen the endless debate about introducing new highway=* values.
At the same time, if iD had originally provided presets like via_ferrata=yes or ladder=yes, new users probably wouldâve followed that pattern instead of tagging highway=via_ferrata directly. And because iD preset PRs take years to get merged, that early guidance never happened, so the top-level tags simply became established by default.
Thereâs nothing to reopen here and itâs not introducing a new highway value. The tag is in use, well established and used by several data consumers. It just doesnât have massive usage numbers because there simply arenât that many via ferratas (relatively speaking).
The original proposal for it is from 2009/2010 https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/w/index.php?title=Proposal:Via_ferrata&oldid=521646
Which is why iD shouldnât provide presets for tags that arenât already established and/or have been accepted via proposal.
That makes it sound like people didnât really think about what they were doing when tagging via ferratas, which is certainly not true. Just take a look at the proposal talk page.
I just searched the forum and I think @Hungerburg is talking about this here?
Someone in that thread mentioned that the router in question even routes bicycles over via ferratas, so yeah⊠definitely broken (even though I quite like BRouter otherwise).
Well, that is what I pointed out above too. It does not help against this being a bad idea though
I was and am not in the mood for calling out names. The condescending tone of that quote certainly will not make me change my mind.
PoV (potential trigger statement, please skip if sensitive:)
Via ferratas are a tourism=attraction intended for mildly sportive people. Having them under highway is an afterthought. The openstreetmap highway key is broken at least as much as those consumers are.
Funnily, this also started as a âsportsâ tag â History repeating, not a coincidence, less successfully though.
As a sidenote, I just ran the numbers for for highway=via_ferrata vs. via_ferrata_scale=*/via_ferrata=* on other highway types through ohsome (only for europe because of performance reasons, but the overwhelming majority/almost all tagged via ferratas are there anyway).
It doesnât work not only because of existing tags like via_ferrata, but also because it breaks when new tags are added (for example highway=busway, which you also donât want to route pedestrians over). Someone simply making a typo in a tag value would also potentially break a router like that.
Why do we expect every OSM contributor to deeply understand logic, subtitilities of classifiction and dont have the same expectations from routing tools developpers ? Too often we expect the contributors to walk on Via ferrata and make data more complicated to fix problems for consumers of the data that want a fast-food product. Pedestrians and wheelchairs cannot go through all paths and surely not on Via Ferrata ! I would not be surprised to start seeing [waterway=river][oneway=yes,no]
I wonder: Wouldnât âtype=pathâ with âdifficulty=âŠâ be a better approach? To me âhighwayâ suggests moving at high speed in a comfortable way, which probably doesnât really apply here ;-)
trying to invent any nice, simple definition characterizing all values of any key is just not really useful activity that is doomed to failure (landuse=grasshistoric=wayside_shrine to take just two other examples)
also, for highway= it is not even a good example for this complaint
While word âhighwayâ is typically understood in American English as a âmain road, especially multi-lane oneâ[1], in British English it has the more general meaning âany public or private road or other public way on landâ.[2]
Did Dick Turpin travel with a harness, two elastic lanyards on carabiners with shock absorbers and a helmet in his luggage for those vertical highways that tourism clubs built to make his journey feel a bit more adventurous?
Dear Mateusz, you will never convice me that highway=via_ferrata is a good idea, no matter your superior command of the British English language. For me a via ferrata best described as:
leisure=route
route=via_ferrata
sport=climbing
And also no matter how many thumbs downs saying such will get me.
PS: Said that, I only ever answered the question posted in the topic of the topic. I never said that it was a bad idea to make the iD editor aware of this tag. Worst thing coming out is some *alpine hiking paths disappearing from lots of renderers/routers screens.
