“bicycle:practical” or “Something below mtb:scale=0” sounds like a cycling equivalent of the discussions about “foot_scale”. Just as cycling has mtb:scale, walking has “sac_scale” which provides various levels of difficulty for hiking in high mountains, but doesn’t help much for day-to-day walking.
Anyone considering proposing something like this for cycling might want to start with these discussions and work back to earlier threads where relevant. I think by the time you’ve read all that, SomeoneElse’s suggestion to focus on existing tags may seem more appealing…
Yes, I see the subjectivity of it. I think that until a definitive OSM-person-model is defined it will be very difficult to create objective assessments that will be agreed upon., and I think that a person-model will differ country to country and by a persons age.
Oh such fun!
For anyone still following the thread, I’ll provide this update on my little research and the final solution I went with.
I ended up setting up JOSM and OsmAndMapCreator to generate the obf files I can send to my phone to figure out how the suggestions brought up here impact bike routing. Here is what I learned:
mtb:scale - setting that to at least 1 makes it so OsmAnd never takes you that path
smoothness - at least horrible is required for the app to take you another way
incline - does absolutely nothing; even with value as crazy as -1000%, the app still wants you to take that path
highway=steps and bicycle=no work as expected, no routing, no surprises there.
After some deliberation, I contributed a change to the path, setting mtb:scale=3 and incline=-100%. I did not use any special tools for my measurements, but it certainly feels like a 45 degree slope. That, on top of the presence of roots and boulders, made me believe the 3 is most appropriate here, considering the lack of hairpins.
With the map being updated and the app no longer taking me this dangerous path, I’m labelling this reply as the solution. Thank you all.
highway=steps and bicycle=no work as expected, no routing, no surprises there.
I sometimes see highway=steps where some easy climbing is required in outdoor situations without actual constructed steps, this feels wrong to me, I see highway=steps as actual stairs, something constructed on purpose, not natural terrain