Sorry but that’s an oxymoron right there. It tells me you don’t frequent this type of “path”.
The best I can do is to send you a description with photographs of one such route:
Please look at the photos from people who uploaded some. I haven’t but can share some, as well.
Could you tell me the surface, inclination, width, etc. of the stretch below? I’ll just take this one as an example. Every section is significantly different, as you will see in the photos (hopefully).
Edit: This was just a relatively small part of the 28km tour that day. I’d probably have to spend 25 out of 24 hours just marking the differences in physical characteristics of the route.
That’s right! The way I too understand the surface=ground wiki page, =ground represents a superset of other more specific tags. So =ground can be in fact be =grass, =clay, =sand, … I’d say that it is a useful tag either as a fuzzy general characterization (think: a fuzzy estimate of the width within a meter) or a general characterization for a path that really does change surface often. I do, however, fail to see why the more specific values would be worse.
Generally, I’d say that if a ‘path’ really does change its surface every few meters and its width cannot be reliably estimated (or really does vary from a few centimeters to many meters in a very short span), maybe ought not be tagged as =path. And here we come to @_MisterY 's point:
Yes, you are absolutely correct! I haven’t ever visited such a path in my life. I’d argue, though, that the ‘path’ in the picture you provided is a perfect candidate for the =pathless (or similar) case. That is, a ‘path’ that does not have any visible indications on the ground (and thus cannot have a sensible estimate for its width), perhaps shouldn’t be tagged as a =path?
Oh, but that’s the thing! There are marks on the ground and it is a well-known route. Moreover, it is found both on the climbing sites (the one I posted) because it is UIAA (climbing) grade 2, as well as on hiking maps as a black / T6 route.
The marks are there but they are just enough to pass. The areas where, if-you-take-a-wrong-turn-you-end-up-in-big-trouble are sometimes marked with “NO!” or “STOP!”. When the route is not obvious, there is sometimes an arrow at an angle sprayed on the rock. Sometimes you follow the marks of the ground, left by the those who’ve been there before you. And sometimes you just follow the terrain. This is the situation in the photo. There simply aren’t too many choices there.
So, varying degrees of what one would expect as a “marking”. But it works and is enough for (experienced) people to follow the route.
After this, there was even harder section, with a steep fall into a deep end of the lake, path covered in grass and wet fallen leaves. That area is not used often and one has to search for the next pointer. Fortunately, there’s been a race recently and fresh spray dots were put at key points, just at the right places. If I’d have to estimate, I’d say every 70m or so. Although that means there were two markings in a 20m section and then nothing for 150m.
This really takes too many words to explain and still doesn’t even scratch the surface. Photos are better but they don’t even reach 20% of the real experience.
I’ve also been on some less frequented paths, which have proportionately less markings. These are not on the map and people have strongly objected to putting them there, even though there was plenty of cairns in the tricky sections. Honestly, I would not feel comfortable knowing that someone I know is walking alone there.
Which is how my involvement in this topic began:
And this illustrates one of the aspects of path problems that we’re trying to make less murky. Hopefully we come up with something, i.e. pathless, for this type of path and slice away that part of the problem.
I don’t really see the connection. I have in mind clear paths used by lots of hikers (much easier than @_MisterY 's example). It’s normal for the width and surface of a path to change as it passes through areas of woodland, clearings, scrub, heath, exposed rock, bog, perhaps a few “improved” bits of paving or boardwalk - all while still being a clearly identifiable path.
Also, “every few metres” and “few centimetres to many meters” are exaggerations that obscure the point. I am thinking mainly of paths that might change from 0.5m to 1.5m or from dirt to grass at intervals of, say, a few hundred metres. The problem is that in order to map those changes you need to constantly monitor the characteristics while walking - which is not something that comes naturally as they are just normal trail conditions. And for paths already mapped it’s difficult without resurveying.
On that point, it’s worth noting that 30% of highway=path have a surface tag, and only 3.6% have width and 2.7% smoothness. For the latter two especially, we clearly have a long way to go if we want them to be generally used - both in encouraging their use for newly mapped paths, and encouraging their addition to existing paths.
They are not “worse”, just more time consuming to survey and map. I am not saying we should discourage specific values - just that we shouldn’t make mappers feel they are essential.
Yeah, I agree! ‘Paths’ than can be indentified on the ground only by man-made marks or cairns would quite naturally and objectively fit their own category, and in my opinion should be tagged as such. That would (slightly) narrow the use-case for paths.
True, that was taken from @_MisterY s post, and they were describing the =pathless case.
Good points! Resurveying paths is a nuisance for sure and we would need to encourage mappers to adopt either the new classifications or to use the descriptive tags. However, I don’t see any way out of the ‘vagueness’ of paths that doesn’t have this or similar handicap. The paths have to be (re)surveyed and the tags (descriptive or categorical) added case-by-case.
But in the example you gave, a surface=ground and width=1.5 m (or est_width=1.5 m) would apparently cover many hundreds of meters if not kilometers of the path? I’d say that that would be a huge improvement over a ‘bare’ highway=path way that, apparently 70% of the paths are! Furthermore, =ground and est_width= would suggest that the path could be surveyed more exactly if someone cares to do it.
Apologies, I misunderstood who was quoting who! I agree that sometimes this really is the case. But there are also lots of examples at my lower (literally) hiking level where the changes are less frequent, but it’s still tedious to have to constantly watch out for them.
Yes - although would est_width = 0.5 (the minimum) or est_width = 1.0 (a rough average) be better? I think these boring details need to be clarified if we want to encourage these tags.
And again, you are using quite a lot of discretion here, which is difficult for new mappers. The wiki pages for width and est_width, for example, are silent on paths with variable with, or how to define the edge of an unpaved path (while going into detail on streets with kerbs).
What would prompt a resurvey just to add descriptive tags, though? We’ve already tried secondary tags, and take-up has been low with the partial exception of surface. Either mappers are not interested, or they are using tools that don’t support these tags well enough, or they find the tags too difficult to apply, or a combination of these. Do you see that changing?
Well, that is the million dollar question, isn’t it!
I obviously have no simple answer and I don’t think that a silver bullet exists here either. In my experience, most (particularly beginner) mappers look around the ways that they encounter and edit for tips on further tags. If most paths miss further descriptive tags, most people wont go out of their way to scour the wiki pages looking for them. I can well understand that. Perhaps just advertising their existence (on OSM Weekly, etc) would help?
In another thread, there was the idea of incorporating ‘presets’ to coding tools (you’d pull a preset for a ‘Hiking path’, for example, and the preset would prompt the mapper to add surface, width, informal, etc. info to the path way). Than might be a way forward. Of course QA tools could nag people about ‘bare’ paths. Maybe that might motivate some.
I remember that someone had coded a map layer (many years ago) that had a bright yellow paint for ways that were tagged lit=yes (and maybe even a different colour for lit:perceived=) and lit=no with a dark colour. The undefined roads had (maybe, this was years ago) a different shade of gray. I used that tool a lot to add lighting conditions to the roads and paths around me. Perhaps someone here remembers the name or URL of that service, maybe it is still in action? Maybe something like that could help with paths too!
One thing that probably would make people aware of the descriptive tags for sure would be if Carto rendered non-surface-tagged (for example) paths differently to the ones that have a surface value. But that won’t happen any time soon, for obvious reasons.
For pedestrians, the profile is fine, but what about cyclists, horses, and motorcycles? I think the basic highway=path should be excluded from these profiles.
motorized traffic is already excluded by default (with a few countries as exceptions).
IMHO we still need a (probably) new highway class for ways that are too narrow for standard 4 wheeled vehicles but legally accessible by default. These would cater for alleys and your motorcycle paths. What is still not completely clear is whether these become two distinct highway types or are subtagged with just one new type, but I tend to think two types would be more suitable.
Maybe we should also give the footway, cycleway and bridleway a new sister, the footcycleway on its own right and with standard additional tags like segregated=*
Ah, but then you get issues like: should a cycleway with foot=yes (ww default no, but allowed by local law) be tagged as a footcycleway with foot=yes (implicit foot=designated because meant for, but reduced to yes because it is just tolerated)? I am 209,5% sure that some hobbit somewhere will mass edit their entire shire for this.
That’s more or less what is done now, isn’t it? If you add a “Path” in ID, for example, the first 3 things you are prompted for are name, surface, width. If you add “Informal Path” it’s similar plus informal=yes (and surface defaults to ground in that case, which is interesting - I hadn’t realised that).
Yes, I absolutely agree with you! The reaction you quoted from me was a question intended for @julcnx and @dieterdreist who replied that the wouldn’t bother adding any additional tags to ‘passable’ paths.
No I did not, adding additional tags is fine, what I wrote is that a highway=path without additional tags is still expected to be “passable”
It might be a useful addition to Key:sac_scale - OpenStreetMap Wiki section “More pictures to aid in grading”, when accompanied with the terms from the specification that it exemplifies. I created that section, but currently it only covers the low grades. The upper grades certainly deserve more clarification, and pictures too.
I think this is a very important issue, albeit one that yields a different conclusion in my mind. There is a simple way to avoid burdening contributors with detailed tags, a solution that has been used abundantly for roads: creating new values for the highway tag.
I’m not suggesting that we create new values for the highway tag. I’m saying that if we had a main tag such as path or route or pathway we could have half a dozen values that would be as many shortcuts for contributors
