Render highway=steps; path; footway of a different colour and line width

[Fintocubano]

The following feature types on the OSM Standard Map:

steps (highway=steps surface=paving_stones);
path (highway=path surface=paved);
footway (highway=footway surface=asphalt) aka foot path on the OSM edit tool

are rendered with various rather thin, dashed lines of a red colour, as shown in the image below, which I think makes the features:

• inconsistent with other similar highway features (highway=residential highway=alley highway=service) that are rendered in white and white-and-grey;
• stand out as something quite different from the other highway features group to which they belong, and not truly appealing to see on the map itself;
• unable to convey the image of a road infrastructure that has got a white and/or grey surface because of paving stones or asphalt respectively (a stream, for instance, is light blue on the map and in the real world);
• look smaller on the map than other road infrastructure, while their width in the real world is instead often more or less the same as a residential, service road or alley.

[geographic location of the image on OSM is here]

I would ask whether you could consider:

• changing the red colour into another colour (or a combination) consistent with the colour or colour pattern generally used for the highway features group;
• revising the width of the dashed line as in its current size it appears to be too thin compared with the width, as displayed on the map, of an alley or residential/service road.

Perhaps Google Maps can provide some inspiration: steps and paths here are rendered in a white-and-grey not too thin dashed line (steps) or white line (foot paths) respectively, providing a consistent rendering with the other road features as shown below (the location circled in yellow is the same as the one on the image above and can be seen on the spherical Street View picture here).

[map copyright 2022 Google]

[imagico]

I am not sure what exactly this issue is suggesting. You seem to be criticizing how steps and footways/paths are rendered but make no concrete suggestion how to change things. And your dislike of the current rendering seems very broad. Hence this is not really an actionable issue.

Keep in mind our rendering of roads and paths is primarily functional and not physical. Your claim of what is similar to paths and steps however seems to be mostly based on physical similarity in a very specific type of urban setting. The strong difference between footways/paths and roads for two-track vehicles is intentional - based on the substantial difference in meaning for the target map user.

look smaller on the map than other road infrastructure, while their width in the real world is instead often more or less the same as a residential, service road or alley.

That might be the case in your local setting but is not the case universally - paths are often just half a meter wide while a road suitable for two-track vehicles is hardly less than 2.5-3m in width.

Just for reference - here the ground unit widths of the different road/path types at z19 at the equator, at the location of your sample and at 60 degrees latitude - note this is the nominal width, for the road types with fill and casing that includes the casing, for footway/path/steps that is just the fill without the casing/halo:

type	pixel	equator	41.8°	60°
footway/path	1.6	0.477m	0.355m	0.238m
steps	3	0.894m	0.666m	0.447m
service-minor	5.5	1.639m	1.221m	0.82m
service	11	3.278m	2.444m	1.639m
residential	17	5.066m	3.777m	2.533m

changing the red colour into another colour

What color would you suggest? Especially considering what other features we already have in the style that might appear very similar in rendering then.

[Fintocubano]

I am not sure what exactly this issue is suggesting. You seem to be criticizing how steps and footways/paths are rendered but make no concrete suggestion how to change things. And your dislike of the current rendering seems very broad.

Sorry you're ''not sure what this issue is suggesting''. In writing this issue (being the first here for me), I tried to follow what the Guidelines (Easy pickings section) suggested, that is looking at another similar issue which is labelled as ''good first issue''. My ''dislike'' and ''criticizing'' (as you call it, but which definitely is not) of the rendering is in fact explained in a detailed way (1st to 4th bullet point) along with a fair, objective suggestion for improvement (5th and 6th bullet points) regarding the colour and the width of the line, also adding an example of potential inspiration.

Hence this is not really an actionable issue.

Not sure what else, on top of what I wrote above, would make this issue ''actionable'', also looking at other ''good first issues'' on this forum, including the one I took as an example?

What color would you suggest? Especially considering what other features we already have in the style that might appear very similar in rendering then.

Please refer to the 5th bullet point and the quoted image example, where the highway features (steps, alley, minor road and B-road (''SP'')) do look similar in colour/colour combination as they are part of the same group of features, that is paved, built-up road (highway) infrastructure. I don't think red is a colour that conveys the image of paved steps, paths and footpaths to the mind of a map user. If e.g. streams/rivers were say purple and parks grey on the map, would the map convey their image? I'm afraid not.

That might be the case in your local setting but is not the case universally - paths are often just half a meter wide while a road suitable for two-track vehicles is hardly less than 2.5-3m in width.

Certainly the reference I made was to my ''local setting'', where I'm afraid the standard width measures you quote do not always apply especially for steps, which can be as wide as or wider than a minor service road or an alley especially in hilltop villages (see the Street View example in my previous post).

I think striking a balance like Google Maps did in gradually rendering the width of the line and showing all these highway features in a white/grey colour (and a combination of lines/filling/dashes like e.g. grey dots on white surface for paved footpaths) would make the map more ''functional'' to the ''target map users'' and increase its visual quality and clarity as well.

The image below shows a comparative example of the highway features in an area of Rome, Italy rendered on Google Maps (left) and OSM Standard (right). I think the former sort of ticks all the boxes regarding functionality, visual quality and clarity of the map as regards the highway features (also note the pedestrian crossing, something I'm not sure OSM has and could perhaps be willing to look into?).

[ geo location here ]
.

[imagico]

Regarding your suggestions in points five and six:

changing the red colour into another colour

I don't see a good option here that would not clash with other color choices and that would work across the full range of zoom levels we display footways on. But if you think you have an idea please suggest it. If we'd decide to not differentiate between footways and cycleways any more this would be a bit easier - one possibility would be to use something based on the previously used line signature for highway=path - before the unification of those with highway=footway (#1713). But i don't think unifying footways and cycleways would be a good option.

revising the width of the dashed line

How wide would you suggest to render them? As i have shown at the highest zoom level rendered on osm.org footways are drawn in a width of - without casing/halo - up to 0.5m and steps up to 0.9m. It is natural and not a big problem if at lower zoom levels roads and paths are drawn at a larger than physical width but for good mapper feedback we want to avoid the roads/paths hiding micro-mapping of other things at the highest zoom level shown.

Beyond that i still do not see what you are positively suggesting here beyond an overall make the map look more like Google Maps.

What i can try to do is explain a few things more in detail that i have the impression you have misunderstood a bit.

• the good first issue label is used to indicate issues reported here that the maintainers consider to be a suitable choice for new developers to select as first issue to work on solving. This means issues (a) with a fairly strait away solution that does not require too delicate design work to implement (b) with the solution being technically reasonably simple to implement and (c) which are uncontroversial and therefore the solution is likely to be accepted.
• our rendering of roads and paths is primarily functional and not physical means that the difference in rendering between different types of roads and paths is meant to primarily reflect differences in function for the target map users and less differences in physical appearance. A highway=footway is rendered very differently from a highway=service despite the fact that both can occasionally look physically very similar because the rendering of highway=footway is meant to indicate a path usable for pedestrians while rendering of highway=service is meant to indicate an access road usable with a car.

The comparison with Google Maps is only of very limited use because of the fundamentally different data models and the fundamentally different purposes and optimization criteria of the maps. Note however that the picture you sketch of how Google renders roads and paths is at least very incomplete - a few examples for that:

https://www.google.de/maps/@49.4180601,8.7097705,17z?ucbcb=1
https://www.openstreetmap.org/#map=17/49.41713/8.71058

https://www.google.de/maps/@47.9898875,7.8733674,18z?ucbcb=1
https://www.openstreetmap.org/#map=18/47.98928/7.87371

https://www.google.de/maps/@48.0751895,7.3572497,16.96z?ucbcb=1
https://www.openstreetmap.org/#map=17/48.07485/7.35586

[matkoniecz]

inconsistent with other similar highway features (highway=residential highway=alley highway=service) that are rendered in white and white-and-grey;

This is deliberate, styling in similar way as roads was tried and failed to distinguish minor service roads and footway/cycleways

unable to convey the image of a road infrastructure that has got a white and/or grey surface because of paving stones or asphalt respectively (a stream, for instance, is light blue on the map and in the real world);

Map are often using some colours matching objects (forest, water features for example), but it is not mandatory.

look smaller on the map than other road infrastructure, while their width in the real world is instead often more or less the same as a residential, service road or alley.

Footways are typically smaller than roads. highway=pedestrian is rendered similar to roads (and is hard to distinguish/communicate that it is not for cars, but that is a separate problem)

I don't see a good option here that would not clash with other color choices and that would work across the full range of zoom levels we display footways on. But if you think you have an idea please suggest it.

+1

[danieldegroot2]

Adding to this and summarizing some of the above;

• There is no concrete suggestion. Discussion to determine at least one possible solution is better held on e.g. the talk mailing list. Note,
  -- The only given example, 'gray/white', is already being used by a range of keys and tags (construction subtags, access=no/private/.., railway subtags, barriers, ..)
  -- Other colours are also already taken by either other highway features (bridleway green, track brown -both dashed and continuous variants-, cycleway blue) or by underlying landuse (ex. forest green).
  -- (Further changes to styling may cause steps/path/footway to become harder to differentiate); don't hesitate due to this.

So, to kickstart such a discussion, it would be good to do more research:

• Existing rendering for different (highway/railway/barrier/..)s which you can find on the OpenStreetMap Wiki.
• Existing discussion on the mailing lists and elsewhere using the browser of your choice.
• Existing renderings on other maps, real-life (traffic/route) signs(, as well as anything else you think of for a given colour).
  -- Map styles based on OSM data can be found on the wiki (a.o. Hiking, They use OSM, ..).
  -- Carto has rendered different highways with other colours in the past, but they didn't have enough contrast to landuse -most of which i.e. Google Maps doesn't have-.
• (Other steps/path/footway issues -both open and closed- in this github repo (i.e. footways are too bright/rendered too early).)
• Refer to CARTOGRAPHY.md when making decisions what to use.

It is likely this issue will (have to) be closed until said solution has been found -people can still comment just in case-.
Once it's been discussed, it'd can be put back here. Though, after that, it's a case of finding someone to make some rendering examples for different areas and different zooms.

---

Just fyi; I would personally think of the following - you may find these pop-up in discussions yourself:

• Example for red colour: Long-distance and alpine hiking trails usually have white-red markings. It's most recognizable to experienced hikers in (alpine) Europe. It can be considered too specific an example in other parts of the world.
• Example for another colour: Ordnance Survey is often looked at as one possible source of inspiration. They use
  -- green for various types of paths. We use green for
  --- bridleway: dashed line
  --- tree row/hedge: continuous line
  --- forest/wood/..: area
  -- 'pink' for various types of paths on their Landranger maps. Also, a lighter 'pink' on their regular maps for various roads. We
  --- also use variants of 'pink' for several road types already.

I hope this helps.
(links in this post are limited to the essential ones)

---

(also note the pedestrian crossing, something I'm not sure OSM has and could perhaps be willing to look into?).

PS: Off-topic (OT); things like zebra crossings are rendered by third-parties a.o. AB Street; it's possible, but you kind of need #180 and #3201 (which is pinned) before you can really do them justice.

Also, in your example there's some circles of 'forest', for which there's several other tags which may fit better. They may be considered Tagging for the renderer (though I wouldn't say it's that big of a deal in this case).

--

The use of red for a.o. footways was also mentioned in #2270 (comment) as it is also being used for military areas to indicate danger, this being seemingly inconsistent.

[kaneap]

One possible suggestion may be to take inspiration from the German Carto style:

Compare the current rendering:

It does have the advantage as well of being more visible over the wood.

[imagico]

Keep in mind the German style:

• does not use purple for administrative boundaries so is free to use purple for cycleways
• differentiates between highway=path and highway=footway based on primary tag (which we are not doing)
• does not render a paved/unpaved distinction on footways

Aside from that the German design has various issues on its own that clash with our design paradigms here - in particular that cycleways/footways look closer to minor service roads than to highway=path.

That does not mean looking at the German style (and others) is not a good idea if you are contemplating improving path rendering in OSM-Carto. This is definitely a valuable thing to do. But be mindful of the constraints.