Thanks for everyone's good feedback and discussion. I feel we are getting closer to a conclusion.
Before this discussion my view on how it should work was: Designed/mostly used for vehicles, forestry, agriculture, bush fire trucks (known as fire trails in Australia) -> highway=track Designed/mostly used for walking (including hiking) -> highway=footway Designed/mostly used for bicycles (including mountain biking) -> highway=cycleway Designed/mostly used for horses -> highway=bridleway Not designed for any specific mode/mixed use (no formal designation) -> highway=path Although that feels most logical to me, since the sentiment here is strongly against this view about highway=cycleway including mountain bike tracks, I'm proposing instead: Designed/mostly used for city cycling (excluding mountain biking) -> highway=cycleway Designed/mostly used for mountain biking (excluding city cycling) -> highway=path + path=mtb Not designed for any specific mode/mixed use -> highway=path The reasoning behind this takes into consideration: bicycle= as an access tag should refer to any class of bicycles by default. Today I was walking a track which had a no bicycles sign, meaning all types of bikes are disallowed. Conversely bicycle=yes just means that bicycles are legally/physically allowed, it does not indicate suitability by a specific type of bicycle. I don't think I've ever seen signage which says no mountain bikes but you can use a road bike, or vice versa. If there is then we should use sub bicycle access tags like road_bike=, mtb=, bmx= etc. You could have a path which is clearly a mountain bike track but officially bicycles are not allowed. So based on this we can't use these kinds of access tags to define the type of path they must be kept independent. Not all mountain bike tracks are mtb=designated. Many paths are built for and used mostly by mountain bikes, key giveaways are jumps, corner banks and other technical features, but not officially signposted or marked for use by mountain bikes. Conversely the track could be signposted for use by mountain bikes but not actually be a mountain bike track, eg. it could be highway=track which is not a mountain bike track, but indicated as a way for use by mountain bikes so mtb=designated. So I'm proposing the access tags bicycle= refer to any/all bicycles. mtb= become an access tag (mtb=designated for signposted mountain bike). path=mtb become a tag to say the path on the ground here is designed=mostly used for mountain biking. I feel this is better than a new highway=singletrack tag since renderers, routers, etc can still interpret the path without making changes. If we move to a new tag, these tracks will disappear from routers and maps overnight. All other tags like surface, smoothness, mtb:scale, route=mtb still apply. leisure=track would still apply to short loop tracks like a BMX pump track or a velodrome, but not to longer A to B tracks. Thoughts? I can help work on the wiki proposal for these tag changes (mtb= as an access tag and path=mtb) but keen to hear feedback here first.
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