Surely if a signed cycleway always allows pedestrians, a cycleway sign means “pedestrians and bicycles allowed”? So why is one designated and the other not? Just because there happens to be a drawing of a bicycle?
I know these are not your words but the original proposal. It’s not surprising that people have wanted to read more meaning into "designated, if it originally depended on a distinction between “not forbidden” and “allowed”. A distinction that doesn’t match anything in normal English. It might be appropriate in some fields - theology, perhaps - but it seems rather obscure for a mass mapping effort.
I don’t see how your definition differs from designated means “a sign says yes” and yes means “not forbidden” / “implicitly allowed”. But yes, you worded it much nicer than the proposal
foot=designated means it is a way specifically meant for walking. Yes means it can be any sort of way, and walkers are allowed to use it. I can’t understand how this could be seen as the same.
What’s the same is the aspect that both are eligible for foot routing. A difference could be made in the weight or penalty of the ways for routing: I guess a designated footway would be more attractive than, say, a service road road allowing foot access.
Hiking maps could also display a designated footway more prominent than, say, a cycleway with foot=yes, or a path having default foot-, horse- and bicycle access.
I think the confusion is that the legal access rights for pedestrians appear to be the same, and foot= is supposed to be an access key. The “designated” value for this key just doesn’t seem to fit with the rest of the possible values (e.g. yes, permissive, customers, destination).
I think legal access in practice is not a simple yes-or-no thing. Permissive, customers, destination are in principle yes, but it depends. Designated is in principle yes, AND it’s even given a special status: made for/meant for. In the end, on the road, the dependencies determine if there is actual legal access for the traveller: either yes or no. But the ifs and unlesses could produce either, that’s why the range of access values is tagged on the way: to cover the circumstances. Put differently: permissive weakens the legal access, dedicated strengthens it.
One step further would be ‘mandatory’ (for traveling by that transport method in that direction). If permissive is seen as a legal access value, then I think designated and mandatory would also be legal access values.
Anyway, designated was approved as a legal access value, I think it is not productive to challenge that. Mappers who decide that yes is good enough for designated ways, currently do no harm, although they may underestimate the value of a way for the transport mode in question.
On a first glance, that might ring true. Until you happen over a designated (by intent) but customers (by legalese) facility.
I oppose. I rather think, some 20 people back when designated was approved (as a primary tag, so-to-say, that can be applied doubly or triply) did not consciously decide about access tagging, they rather were looking for a way to do away with footway and cycleway and bridleway.
So now a footway is a designated foot path and a cycleway is a designated cycle path, as granted/assigned by the relevant authority, and there are also paths designated as footcycleways, for which we don’t use a separate tag.
By coincidence, these official cycleways and footways usually come with laws and rules about who can access them in addition to the cyclists / pedestrians they are meant for.
Also by coincidence, people call a path clearly designated as a the way to use if you are a cyclist, a “cycleway”.
In the meantime, there are paths equally meant for cyclists and pedestrians, as shown by traffic signs or markings. Since the highwayvalue footcycleway doesn’t exist, one can use highway=path and tag the designations for cycling and walking on it. Mappers who do not want to see designated as an access value: designated conveys the designation which also entails legal access.
Repeating myself: highway=path + foot=designated + bicycle=designated is a good way to inform data users of the situation.
Often the path is mandatory (for people going in that direction using that particular transport method). This is not tagged on the path itself. It is only relevant is there is an alternative nearby, such as a road. In that case the road carries the information that it is not to be used by the cyclists/pedestrians, with the tag bicycle=use_sidepath or bicycle=no and foot=use_sidepath or foot=no. Where again, use_sidepath is access-plus, but it is a vaue of the access keys.
Are you saying that “designated” means not merely “intended by use by this mode of transport”, but “intended for use by this mode of transport AND all members of the public using this model of transport have a legal access right”?
If that’s really what it means, it is very poorly documented. And as already mentioned, it’s unclear how to tag ways intended (and signposted) for a particular mode by a landowner who allows access only to guest or customers.
People here have complained that if you tag any path clearly meant for pedestrians as highway=path foot=designated, then you lose the ability to tag whether access is permissive, private, limited to customers, …
The only way out I can see is this: it’s only =designated if it’s also =yes, that is, if I also have a legal right to use it. [1]
That means: if it’s clearly designated or intended for pedestrians, maybe even has the same signage/symbols as a foot=designated path, but legal access is permissive, then the correct access value is foot=permissive and NOT foot=designated.
Another way of saying this is: a footpath where access is private should never be tagged foot=designated, even when it’s clearly meant for pedestrians and no one else, it should be tagged foot=private.
Does everyone at least agree on this?
keeping in mind that “I have a right to use the path” and “I am allowed to use the path” are two slightly different things ↩︎
Do you have an example where this is an issue for bicycles or pedestrians?
I sometimes encounter situations where access for cyclists is designated and private. Highway=cycleway plus bicycle=private takes care of that.
But combined foot/cycleways through a private area, mapped as path+two access tags, can’t carry two access values for the same transport. In that exceptional case, we’ll settle for private, being the most restrictive of the two access-plus values.
And this is exactly the reason, why “intended for use by” or “specifically designed for” does not belong into an access-tag. Had we been using designation:footway=yes or designation:cycleway=yes or similar[1], the situation would be perfectly clear.
That is not a way out, it is how it is. bicycle=designated without the right to go there on the bicycle does not make sense. In addition, it indicates that the path is officially designated as a cycleway. highway=cycleway conveys the same information.
Only when the same path is equally designated for pedestrians and bicycles, many mappers use highway=path plus both designated tags, indicating that is is a shared bicycle/foot path. They both are allowed there AND even supposed to go there, the path is the way to go for them.
bicycle=yes means: cycling allowed. bicycle=designated means: the path is a cycleway. If a cycleway passes through a special area with an extra usage condition, you just add the appropriate access tag. It will still be a cycleway, still designated, and besides that a usage restriction narrows down the access.
This can only be a problem where a highway=path is used for a designated combined way for cycling and walking. If that happens a lot, in a country where this is commonly done this way, I guess the mappers will have found a solution by now.
In Nederland, it is a rare exception, and will be handled by tagging the most restrictive access value for bicycle and foot. This will still convey the information that it is a path, defaulting to bicycle=yes and foot=yes, and add the other restriction (permissive, destination, customs). You then lose the designated information but keep the access. In the few cases I have seen it’s about a separate path, not accompanying a road.
I don’t know how often this happens in other countries. So far, not many cases have been presented.
For examples of combined walking and cycling paths that should be tagged more restrictively than foot=yes + bicycle=yes, but would otherwise be appropriate to tag foot=designated + bicycle=designated, look for businesses or organizations that have trails on their property for customers only.
The Trapp Family Lodge is a hotel and resort offering a walking and cycling trail network. Paying guests are allowed to walk and bike on the trails during their stay. The general public is not allowed to simply walk onto the trails, however a day pass may be purchased. Since both are paying customers, foot=customers and bicycle=customers are the most accurate access tags. However, it would also be appropriate to specify which trails are designated for cycling and which for waking because some are for one or the other and some are for both.
Another type of example would be a gated community with shared walking & cycling paths for residents. Access for these paths would be foot=private + bicycle=private or maybe *=permissive if they don’t mind outsiders using their paths. However, the paths are still designated for use by pedestrians and bicycles.
So, you have footways, cycleways and paths, all tagged foot=customers and bicycle=customers. The footways and cycleways are also designated (implied). The common paths lack the designated part, because the foot=* and bicycle=* is already used. Since the whole thing is for bicycles and pedestrians, I don’t think that is a major problem, even if you would want to use a router. A router for bicycles, if it will consider customers access at all, might prefer cycleways over combined paths, which is achieved by this tagging.
The question, is there a benefit of having a combination of permissive and designated? permissive indicated you are allowed to use the way, but the owner might forbid the usage at any time for any reason. Is the special case you get kicked out for walking on the cycleway is worth having in the database?
In public space, there is a difference between, since you have a right to use the path. Nobody is allowed to forbid it for any reason (usually). So it’s worth to have the fact in the database, that you might get punished, if you walk on the cycleway.
Rules may differ on private grounds; in Nederland, if the area has permissive access, the owner can enforce his own rules as long as they are posted at the entrances. If you don’t break any rule, the owner can not legally kick you out. If it says “Walking only allowed on foot paths” or comparable, then we tag foot=no on the bicycle paths. Even though foot=no is (wrongly) the world wide recommended default for highway=cycleway.
When access=customers, I think in Nederland the owner can kick anyone out any time.
As said, we tag highway=footway|cycleway|path as appropriate, then add permissive access. Other rules are mostly about dogs, birds and seasonal/daylight restrictions.
Many say “free walking on the paths”, which means only pedestrians are allowed and have to stick to the paths. So they are simply footways, some of us are good at conditionals, and we don’t record the sticking.
