It was an ‘American’ tourist who was trying to get to St Catherines Island, which is only accessible by walking across the beach. I have no idea what satnav they were using, but probably a Nissan built in one. In OSM the path is mapped as a footway.
If there is no navigable route a satnav will get you to the nearest point and in this case they probably just kept going.
No mapping issue here, just an driver incompetent driver who should never drive again.
Interestingly, the way where this happened is about 2.4m wide on average (measured in JOSM) but it happened on a curve 1.8m wide with insufficient lateral clearance for, say, 1.7m wide vehicles (the Juke in the photo is 1.8m wide). If this way were not legally designated as a footway (I couldn’t find any signage, but my options are limited), then if the classification is made based on:
Intended use: I think it would be uncontroversial that this way is highway=footway as its intended main use is clearly for pedestrian traffic just by looking around a bit.
Traffic rules: motor vehicle access may be considered legal, so this way would be highway=alleyway or even highway=unclassified.
The average car width in the UK today is around 1.82m, so clearly this way is not intended for most cars there regardless of an existing official designation, so I think highway=unclassified would misinform local map users. Motorcycles would have no problem though.
I think they should be classified based on their main function, but I also think that exceptionally narrow width changes its function significantly: it imposes limits on vehicle size, it slows most vehicles down, people may get stuck if a delivery vehicle stops there for a while - those tend to be forbidden in these narrow ways in some countries but not all, rendering of the standard wide residential/unclassified ways is too wide where buildings are closely packed.
I cannot find any photos of signage, although the destination is never going to be accessible by car so I can imagine it getting them as close as it could and then they carried on rather than finding somewhere to park and walking.
A case of without due care and attention and blindly following a satnav.
Pat of this is conflating the physical dimensions of what is there, with the perceived notion of how it might be used. Those perceptions can be cultural, while the physical dimensions are what they are. If there are actual, on the ground permissions/restrictions on use of a narrow passageway, that information should also be included on the way. Perceptions of potential usages may lead us down the wrong path. At some point the renderer has to make choices. If a pedal powered quad-wheel delivery vehicle can operate there, that requires a tag (of some sort).
I think what leads us back into the best path are perceptions of main intended uses. These work well where the law is vague, where official data is missing, and in borderline cases where more than one highway value could be used depending on interpretation of a particular situation.
Dear @julcnx, it does not help if you leave out half of the sentence in a quote.
Do not get me wrong, I have traveled to South-East Asia and even have rent a small motorcycle and rode on these small, unpaved ways. It was an experience and I learned that my skills are not the best as I had to ask my girl-friend to walk at several places while trying to get the bike where I wanted to go and local families were passing with five persons on one bike.
Still, I would use highway=service + service=alley only in build-up areas and I do not think it would be smart to cover both, narrow roads in urban and narrow roads in rural areas, with one single tag.
Currently, I am a bit puzzled what we actually try to solve here. For renderers and routers we already have narrow=yes plus width=* (+ est_width=*). If this information is not used, we need to know why. On the other hand, we should educate mappers that this information is important and encourage them to add it more frequently.
I know there are some longstanding discussions about highway=path but what is wrong with highway=path + motor_vehicle=yes ( or motorcycle=yes) + width=* + surface=*? If you really need a new tag for these rural paths for motorcycles, bicycles and pedestrians, I would suggest highway=motor_vehicle_path, highway=motorcycle_path or similar.
Currently, I am a bit puzzled what we actually try to solve here. For renderers and routers we already have narrow=yes plus width=* (+ est_width=*). If this information is not used, we need to know why.
the tag narrow, 35k uses, is defined for a different meaning, the wiki definition doesn’t read as if it could serve the same purpose as an alleyway or narrow road class: https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Key%3Anarrow
What pathways are you talking about in Asia which are neither service nor residential roads, e.g. not leading to the front or back door. Do you have some pictures, please.
Fine, forget about narrow=* and let us talk about width=* only.
Yes, while currently some people are using highway=service with service=alley for all kinds of alleys, others are using highway=residential with width. The problem with this approach is that data consumers often do not expect residential roads which cannot be physically used by cars. The idea of a new tag is to make it clearer from the beginning that trouble may await you.
Natural languages in Europe typically distinguish these narrow ways from streets, at least it is the case for English, German, Italian, French and Spanish, the reason is they are considered significantly different.
Thanks! Maybe in the rationale section, we could also include some examples showing common alternative tagging methods to highway=residential + width=*:
highway=residential + motorcar=no: In Bangkok, there are 286 instances. Ho Chi Minh City: over 600. Jakarta: 2,867.
highway=footway|path + motorcycle=yes: In Bangkok, there are 946 examples, 357 in Jakarta, and none in Ho Chi Minh City.
service=alley: Bangkok has 1,629 instances, Ho Chi Minh City has a massive 21,329, and Jakarta has 1,350.
Just a heads-up: most of the service=alley usage in Asia isn’t for utility access as intended, but for narrow roads that provide access to the front of buildings, including residences.
From my experience, the situation is similar in some parts of Europe, the restriction to back access was written after many alleys had been tagged, originally there wasn’t a description what service=alley was supposed to mean.
Still we are now in a situation where it is clear that this kind of tagging is disputed and it seems better to solve the issue with a new approach.
Indeed, service=alley in Vietnam is normally for building front access. There’s a simple explanation for why they’re tagged as alleys: Alley 1716/46/24 is thought of as an alley, and an alley is a kind of road, not a kind of path or trail. (You can even write “Alley” instead of a slash when addressing an envelope in English.) Typically, a narrow alley connects to another narrow alley to another narrow alley to a grand motorcycle boulevard. Sometimes mappers arbitrarily promote a more accessible alley to highway=residential, but this isn’t based on any particular aversion to highway=service.
If this differs from analogous things in Thailand, perhaps there’s a linguistic reason for the discrepancy?
