Footway vs cycleway (vs path)

[SafwatHalaby]

I’m in favor of having a mini-gallery of example tags and pics covering all the common cases.

How would you tag a “single” that has a teardrop marking usually not in urban places?

I’d use highway=bicycle, foot=yes. (Mainly bicycles, foot allowed).

[SafwatHalaby]

@zstadler

A cycleway and a footway so close together will show unpredictable results on most maps. An alternative which I like better is to tag it as
highway=path

There’d some loss of some info loss with this tagging. A marked bicycle lane is a specific (and rarer) case of the more generic path. Whether or not that is important to distinguish, I don’t know.

[zstadler]

@SwiftFast

@zstadler

A cycleway and a footway so close together will show unpredictable results on most maps. An alternative which I like better is to tag it as
highway=path

There’d some loss of some info loss with this tagging. A marked bicycle lane is a specific (and rarer) case of the more generic path. Whether or not that is important to distinguish, I don’t know.

The second part of my post included a solution for the “loss of information” concern. It was not a very long post…

Also, look at http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Key:cycleway for tagging of bicycle lane on a road.

There is a preference in OSM to have a single element for a physical entity and include the desired details as part of its tags. This also holds for multi-lane ways.

[zstadler]

@SwiftFast

Trail guide:

Is it wide enough for cars and not paved? go for highway=track

Can only people go through?(ability) highway=footway (nahal downhill/uphill, very rocky paths, narrow paths, etc)

Otherwise, highway=path

If you are experienced enough with horses and/or bikes to tell that a path is suitable for one but not the other, use highway=path, bicycle/horse=no

*Obscure case: Can only bikes go through?(law) highway=cycleway. I think this doesn’t exist in non urban areas.

There are plenty of dedicated trails for bicycles tagged with highway=cycleway. Many of them were not built or intended for pedestrian walk.

[SafwatHalaby]

You’re right. I didn’t need to split this to urban/trail as it’s almost the same. I’ll edit it.

[valleyofdawn]

The distinction between a paved and an unpaved bicycle path is very important as the latter exclude rod bikes and can generally only be ridden by mountain bikes.
This could make a big difference in the future for routing software.

I routinely convert cycleways to paths+bicycle=yes/dedicated whenever I encounter them in open areas.