Totally with you. Though that’s a rather unpopular approach, as the results will show OSM is less complete, but it would be more reliable.
During I developed my Garmin cycling map about ~15 years ago, ways intended for cycling (path, cycleway, track, footway with bicycle=yes) without surface or tracktype was displayed differently. So everyone could see, hey use it on your own risk (and it would be nice you add that missing data).
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One part of the routing answer might be for router to allow a user to choose whether informal paths are used or not. Having been to the US and tried to walk to places, I can fully understand the problems that you’d get without doing that. That said:
I suspect that part of the solution has to involve someone Actually Going There. This doesn’t have to be some sort of announted Mapper™, it might just be a local who goes there every day who can say e.g. “there is deep mud here” or “someone has built a wall”, or maybe even take a photo.
Yes, working with lower quality imagery and without access to additional sources does make detailed tagging of highways more difficult. But even working from Maxar imagery alone, you can identify a couple of aspects of roads that make it possible to make reasonable decisions about categorization. Specifically: the general condition of the road, and its overall importance in the transportation network.
That’s not to say that the results from working with limited sources will be perfect. But a close guess is better than leaving something “unknown.”
Having just updated many miles of roads in Sequoia and Inyo National Forests, I agree that working under evergreen canopy poses some challenges. But these are not insurmountable if you’re diligent.
I wasn’t suggesting that. But bicycles and motor vehicles are always prohibited in Wilderness, so at least you can add those restrictions.
I do not thing this statement is true worldwide by far (I think in my European country it is legal to use bikes on paths unless it is explicitly prohibited but frankly I am not even sure, if it is illegal nobody respects that law).
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If you’re familar with the local area and travel around it every day, perhaps. If you’re sat in a chair in another country, the evidence from Grab, Meta and MS suggests not.
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Indeed. That’s why the original suggestion was to apply restrictions from local protected areas.
Perhaps so. Or perhaps Grab, Meta and MS need to do a better job. 
A good example is at FM1518/First Street just north of Peterson Boulevard in Schertz, TX – peds wanting to get to the Main Street area from the south have to negotiate the First Street RR crossing without the aid of formal sidewalks through the crossing itself, even though there are sidewalks running along both sides of the street near or up to to the edge of the RR ROW.
This can be seen in this map image, with Main Street Schertz to the north in the salmon-pink and the grey area to the south being a (not very well mapped yet) SFR neighborhood accompanied by a park off-shot to the southwest:
and in the street level imagery of the area:
Where do I begin? How about this family pushing a shopping cart along the gravel soft shoulder beside eastbound West Capitol Expressway:
What they’re doing is quite dangerous, but it is what Valhalla recommends:
The formal route, as recommended by GraphHopper and OSRM, saves some 80 feet, but they can’t haul the cart up the narrow stairs:
I just added foot=no to the westbound lanes of the expressway, based on an awkwardly placed sign, so Valhalla will soon prefer the same route as GraphHopper and OSRM. Still, the soft shoulder is apparently a long-cut that sees some use. Maybe I should map it as a desire line, either highway=path path=desire or highway=footway informal=yes. I’ve hesitated so far because stroller=yes seems particularly perverse in this situation, but it is the most likely routing in the immediate vicinity.
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What they’re doing is quite dangerous
frankly it doesn’t look so from this picture, are cars occasionally driving on the verge?
The photo shows the family walking along the soft shoulder while pushing the shopping cart along the roadway’s rain gutter. The shoulder is actually an unmarked bike lane, but it’s wide enough to accommodate cyclists comfortably. However, they just got off the overpass, which has neither a sidewalk nor a verge nor even a rain gutter. They would’ve had to walk directly in the bike lane. Worse, for about 150 feet, the bike lane becomes merely an advisory lane of sorts: motorists traveling at 50 miles per hour are encouraged to turn into this lane before turning onto the off-ramp.
Here’s roughly the path they would’ve taken, if we were to map it as an informal path:
This is just one a litany of examples where people go beyond the formal pedestrian network out of a sense of necessity. A mile to the south, this desire line along a narrow verge connects a park and a large residential subdivision to a bus stop that is otherwise cut off by mainline freight and passenger railroad tracks. The informal route, courtesy of @UrbanUnPlanner, is 0.2 miles long.
The formal route would send the pedestrian on a circuitous path in the wrong direction through a neighborhood to get to the next legal crosswalk, adding another 0.8 miles:
Both Mapillary and Bing Streetside show pedestrians taking the informal route.
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