dieterdreist wrote > While duck tagging works very good within the same culture and region, it > bears at the same time the risk that mappers in different regions have > different assumptions of what is implied by certain words.
+1 On first sight, descriptive keys like footway or cycleway seem to give a clear indication of the type of a path. Actually that’s only true, if you provide - in addition to the highway tag - other decent attributes, like surface, width, smoothness, incline etc. So either way an equal number of tags are usually required to describe a way equally. The main reason why I propose to change „…used mainly or exclusively by pedestrians“ to "highway=footway is used for pathways designated for pedestrians.“ is, that on most of the planet (outside of the UK;) there are only few sign posted or otherwise designated footpaths out of urban/residential or otherwise popular/crowded areas. Rural and wilderness paths globally may be used by all kinds of non 4-wheel traffic, including stock, mule, yaks, motorcycles etc. and are rarely exclusively footways. The actual usage of footway vs path in the UK is significantly different from most of the rest of the world, partly because of national access restrictions, partly because of the "duck tagging" mapping tradition, which is understandable and historically determined. The proportion of path:footway globally is 1:1.4, in France it's 1:1, in Poland 1:3 and in UK 1:5! In the UK especially England and Wales a highway with designation=public_footpath is mainly attributed as footway (even if it's physically a track). geow -- View this message in context: http://gis.19327.n5.nabble.com/highway-footway-Advanced-definition-Distinction-footway-vs-path-tp5851506p5851854.html Sent from the Tagging mailing list archive at Nabble.com. _______________________________________________ Tagging mailing list Tagging@openstreetmap.org https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/tagging
