New siblings of foot/cycle/bridle/way

Thank you for the cue, and also thank you for all the threads you have started. They have spawned important and interesting discussions!

I’ll try to be as brief and succinct as I can here.

So, an idea would be to create named presets in the coding tools (rather than new highway values because of what @Langlaeufer eloquently said here ). In my idea, these would have highway=path and different additional descriptive tags that the user would have to fill in. Also, I hail from Finland where Freedom to Roam laws grant near universal right to walk and bicycle everywhere. So here =path implies foot=yes and bicycle=yes, but this is probably not universally true.

One preset might be “Hiking path/Multi-use path”. This would require surface to be either in the paved superset (but coded with the more accurate asphalt/paving_stones/etc.) or a firm fine_gravel/compacted, etc. It would have to have width of at least 2 m and at least smoothness=intermediate.

The second preset might be called “Informal path”. surface could be not only in the unpaved superset as above, but possibly in the ground superset (e.g. grass or dirt). width may vary, but has to be striclty and well below 2 m. smoothness can be bad or worse, and informal=yes when needed & applicable.

Lastly a preset for the “Pathless” case, which would have surface only in the ground superset (but with a specific value). If width cannot be reliably estimated, trail_visibility=intermediate or worse has to be put in. informal=yes is implied?

smoothness is of course always a personal estimate, and its meaning depends on the value of the surface tag as well. This isn’t a huge problem, as e.g. values of bad or horrible do convey a usable, if fuzzy, meaning nevertheless. Width doesn’t have to be micrometer-accurate. Most people can eyeball that value to about within half a meter (two feet). The path wouldn’t have to be exactly that wide throughout, but it shouldn’t be substantially narrower for substantially long stretches either.

These are obviously just tentative suggestions, but perhaps a start. Criticism and further suggestions are welcome! Also, this may be fundamentally a very bad idea. If you think that, here is a good place to document why to prosperity!

Also, there is probably enough overlap that further classes would be warranted between or beyond the ones suggested. I any case, these classes would answer the question, whether one can stroll in the path in leather-soled oxfords, or if hiking boots are needed/if a normal bicycle is usable or if you need a mountain bike or if biking is physically out of the question.

There’s one criticism that I’ll cover pre-epmtively: that descriptive tags don’t fit the bill because no one will ever fill them. I take this to imply that the persons suggesting this think that we are simply unable to ever overcome the problems with paths. The paths are exceptionally variegated in their physical properties. Therefore they would have to be classified according to these physical properties, completely irrespective of whether we conjure up further highway values or sub-classifications on the path key. Why not just add the physical characteristics with tags that describe them directly? This enterprise will of course take time, since the tags (descriptive, sub-classifications, or new highway values) will have to added or changed case-by-case. It’ll take years, probably over a decade until most paths have been corrected.

Oh, and BTW I think that we should add surface and smoothness tags to cycleways and footways that lack them.

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