The פארק היערן area is a place full of mtb community-maintained singles. But it is quite a mess in any cycle map (e.g. Israel Hiking Map | Open Cycle Map). I’d like to normalize the tagging, and then add lots of survey data which I’ve been collecting. This will make OSM much higher quality in this region. Before doing this, I wanted to consult the community.
Current inconsistencies:
A mix of highway=cycleway, highway=path, bicycle=yes, bicycle=designated
Sometimes, the mtb name is on name and sometimes on mtb:name.
Planned mass-edit:
For each highway=cycleway
Change to highway=path, bicycle=designated
If a name is present, move it to mtb:name.
If foot=yes is present, remove it, since it is implied.
For each highway=path
If there is a name, manually verify whether this is a designated bicycle single, surveying if needed, and if so, change to highway=path, bicycle=designated, name => mtb:name.
Otherwise, remove bicycle=yes and foot=yes if present.
A pathway too narrow for vehicles, accessible by foot, bicycle, and horse. Usually Unpaved.
Add bicycle=designated where the path is part of a bicycle trail.
Add foot=designated if the path is to be shared by bikers and hikers.
Naming trails
Official mountain-bike (MTB) trails are represented using relations, as described above. In addition there are many unofficial single-tracks that have been named by the MTB community. Such single-tracks do not have relations. Instead, the mtb:name=* mtb:name:he=, and mtb:name:en= (optional) are placed on the way(s) themselves.
The (sometimes changing) values in the tables below are not a reason to omit explicit tagging on ways in OSM and are also not a reason to remove existing tagging from ways.
As for the rest of the clean up, I have no opinion one way or the other, but it sounds like you thought it through and I’m all for improving consistency and data quality, so I say go for it.
In the same spirit as @NeatNit wrote, please do not remove any foot=*, bicycle=*, or mtb=* tags.
Please do not add bicycle=designated just because a highway=path has an MTB name. Such a change modified the interpretation of the path from dual-purpose to MTB-only.
Thank you for the feedback. I’ll keep the access tags as they are. Is it ever appropriate to remove implied access tags? I’ve seen it done before. Would that be an error?
Please do not add bicycle=designated just because a highway=path has an MTB name. Such a change modified the interpretation of the path from dual-purpose to MTB-only.
Noted. Paths will be turned into designated only if the survey shows they’re designated. I’ll separate the mass edit changeset from the survey changesets.
In a similar spirit, I am seeing bicycle=no on places that are just darn hard for a bicycle and is typically walked by foot, but some pro might pull it off downhill, e.g. Way: 60917749 | OpenStreetMap . They are not illegal for bicycles as far as I know.
Am I hitting a bigger mapping problem here?
Do colored hiking trails imply bicycle=no legally?
Some mappers use no such as access=no, motorcar=no, bicycle=no, horse=no, foot=no, to indicate physical restrictions on highways, even when access is legal. Whether a way is blocked, narrow, overgrown, impractical, or dangerous, this approach is controversial. Instead, consider using additional tags such as width, smoothness, sac_scale, mtb:scale, a lifecycle prefix such as abandoned:highway, or adding barrier, obstacle on the respective node(s).
It appears the Wiki states they’re supposed to be all about permission/legality and nothing to do with whether something is practically accessible - there’s mtb:scale and sac_scale for that.
If you think about it, this makes sense, a path may be inaccessible to me via bicycle but accessible to someone with better skills.
But, it seems the ground truth is far from this and there’s variance by countries and lots of discussions spanning years.
Edit: It seems that foot=no usually means “Either this is legally inaccessible, OR practically inaccessible in almost all scenarios”.
Same with bicycle=no - which bothers me much more, because there’s such a huge variance in what’s accessible to whom via bicycle, depending on skill. I’m staying out of this for now, but I will probably be changing some bicycle=no’s to mtb_scale based on physical survey.
It seems like this thread is a mixture of a bulk edit description and a tagging scheme discussion.
A discussion on tagging scheme had started on 13-Mar-2025 in the OSM_Israel telegram channel.
In that discussion I wrote:
להבנתי, יש בקהילת הממפים העולמית שתי אסכולות ואין בניהן הסכמה.
האסכולה האחת אומר ש footway היא משהוא בנוי סלול, כנראה יותר לכיוון של מדרכה, אבל בלי קשר לכביש שלא צריך להיות בסביבה. על פי אסכולה זו, שבילים בטבע, ואולי גם שבילים לא סלולים אחרים, הם path. ההבחנה בין שבילי אופניים, שבילי הליכה, שבילים רב-שימושיים וכדומה נעשית ע"י תגיות foot, bicycle וכו’ שמקבלות ערכים כמו no או designated
האסכולה השניה אומרת ש footway הוא שביל להולכי רגל וזהו. תגית ה surface תאמר אם הוא סלול, תגית bicycle=yes תאמר שגם רכיבה על אופניים מותרת וכו’
Please review the full discussion and resume it there, if needed, and keep this thread focused on the bulk edit.