I didn’t think this discussion here was really a continuation of the highway=scramble discussion: It was never about moving some objects that are currently tagged as paths out of path and into something else.
As I understand it, the rationale for highway=scramble is that data consumers see highway=path and don’t know if it’s a smooth cycle track, a scramble, or a mountaineering route. A version of the problem you described in this ten year old (!) diary entry.
In contrast, the idea for foot_scale started as a side remark (bottom of this post) that sac_scale doesn’t allow us to differentiate between technique and exposure, so (some) mappers found it hard to apply consistently. It also mixes in other things such as slope and footwear requirements. So foot_scale intentionally excludes all that, and just focuses on technique.
Other complaints are that
-
The range of paths covered by T1 is too wide, so
foot_scalehas more values at the lower end -
Paths are tagged as
hiking(T1) solely because they aren’t in the mountains and the next level up (T2) is calledmountain_hiking; also, paths are tagged ashikingto indicate that they are “hiking trails”, you go there in your spare time, for fun, ignoring the difficulty of the path. We’ve been debating the names of the values to avoid that
The root cause of all this is probably that the scale was invented in Switzerland, for the sort of paths and terrain encountered in Switzerland, and never intended to cover paths across the globe.
@Reza_Babri you have been mapping in Iran. Have you encountered any difficulties when applying sac_scale?
As far as I understand, foot_scale is intended to be more fine-grained and more globally applicable than sac_scale. But it’s not going to solve the path problem: data consumers that ignore sac_scale are unlikely to support it. I hope one day we get highway=scramble or similar, I just didn’t think this was it.
As a aside, I don’t see why we should replace sac scale with foot_scale:scramble:grade:sac_scale. It’s just the same thing with a more complicated key name.