Re: [Tagging] Feature Proposal - RFC - Pedestrian lane

[Paul Allen]

On Mon, 25 Nov 2019 at 10:15, Markus  wrote:

> On Sun, 24 Nov 2019 at 23:19, Paul Allen  wrote:
> The examples in my previous message are from 30 km/h zones in
> Switzerland, where there are no marked or signalised pedestrian
> crossings except near schools or homes for senior or handicapped
> people and where pedestrians therefore are allowed to cross the road
> everywhere. The general rule here is that pedestrians must use a
> designated pedestrian crossing, underpass or bridge if there is one
> within 50 m. [1] As far as i know, the situation is similar in other
> countries that follow the Vienna Convention on Road Signs and Signals,

except that the distance varies (often being 100 m).
>

>From Rule 7 of the UK's Highway Code: "Screw the Vienna Convention."

Actually, it doesn't say that.  What it says is:

*First find a safe place to cross* and where there is space to reach the
pavement on the other side. Where there is a crossing nearby, use it. It is
safer to cross using a subway, a footbridge, an island, a zebra, pelican,
toucan or puffin crossing, or where there is a crossing point controlled by
a police officer, a school crossing patrol or a traffic warden. Otherwise
choose a place where you can see clearly in all directions. Try to avoid
crossing between parked cars (see Rule 14
),
on a blind bend, or close to the brow of a hill. Move to a space where
drivers and riders can see you clearly. Do not cross the road diagonally.

But that equates, in this case, to "Screw the Vienna Convention." :)   To
see it in context,
https://www.gov.uk/guidance/the-highway-code/rules-for-pedestrians-1-to-35#rule7

There is no law in the UK against jaywalking (as they call it in the US).
You are advised to cross
where it's safe, and if you cross where it's unsafe and get run over then
it's all your fault.

-- 
Paul
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Re: [Tagging] Feature Proposal - RFC - Pedestrian lane

[Markus]

On Sun, 24 Nov 2019 at 23:19, Paul Allen  wrote:
>
> Depends on jurisdiction too (if I'm following all this correctly, which I may 
> not be).  In
> some jurisdictions, crossing is legal only at specified crossings and they 
> tend to
> be frequent.  In other jurisdictions, like the UK, crossing is legal almost 
> anywhere, but
> there may also be (infrequent) designated crossings.

The examples in my previous message are from 30 km/h zones in
Switzerland, where there are no marked or signalised pedestrian
crossings except near schools or homes for senior or handicapped
people and where pedestrians therefore are allowed to cross the road
everywhere. The general rule here is that pedestrians must use a
designated pedestrian crossing, underpass or bridge if there is one
within 50 m. [1] As far as i know, the situation is similar in other
countries that follow the Vienna Convention on Road Signs and Signals,
except that the distance varies (often being 100 m).

[1]: https://www.admin.ch/opc/fr/classified-compilation/19620246/index.html#a47

> I'm a little worried we could end up with the situation in the UK where it is 
> legal for me to
> cross the road where I am but the routeing engine tells me I have to walk a 
> mile to a
> designated crossing then walk a mile back.  That can probably be solved by 
> adding
> jurisdiction heuristics to routeing engines.  But it needs to be thought 
> about before
> we paint ourselves into any corners.

That's exactly the big problem with sidewalks being mapped as separate
ways in areas where there are no or few designated pedestrian
crossings and where it is allowed to cross the road everywhere. Even
when, at intersections, you map unmarked crossings that are logical
continuations of the sidewalks (which are more or less verifiable
because used by many people) (example [2]), you still get unnatural
routes that are long detours (example [3]). At least in these areas,
mapping sidewalks (and pedestrian lanes) with separate ways seems more
problematical than tagging them on the street way.

[2]: https://www.openstreetmap.org/way/536404830
[3]: 
https://www.openstreetmap.org/directions?engine=fossgis_osrm_foot=46.93737%2C7.44928%3B46.93757%2C7.44893

Regards

Markus

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Re: [Tagging] Feature Proposal - RFC - Pedestrian lane

[Paul Allen]

On Sun, 24 Nov 2019 at 21:52, Markus  wrote:

>
> This is true, but mapping sidewalks with separate ways isn't
> unproblematical either, especially if there aren't any marked
> crosswalks: mapping unmarked crossings is often impossible because not
> verifiable, but not mapping crossings results in disconnected
> sidewalks.


Depends on jurisdiction too (if I'm following all this correctly, which I
may not be).  In
some jurisdictions, crossing is legal only at specified crossings and they
tend to
be frequent.  In other jurisdictions, like the UK, crossing is legal almost
anywhere, but
there may also be (infrequent) designated crossings.

I'm a little worried we could end up with the situation in the UK where it
is legal for me to
cross the road where I am but the routeing engine tells me I have to walk a
mile to a
designated crossing then walk a mile back.  That can probably be solved by
adding
jurisdiction heuristics to routeing engines.  But it needs to be thought
about before
we paint ourselves into any corners.

-- 
Paul
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Re: [Tagging] Feature Proposal - RFC - Pedestrian lane

[Markus]

On Sat, 23 Nov 2019 at 01:03, Nick Bolten  wrote:
>
> These errors are an artifact of not knowing where the sidewalks and crossings 
> actually interface and having to guess about them.

It should be possible to solve this problem by specifying the width of
the carriageway (width=*) and of the sidewalk(s)
(sidewalk[:left/right]:width=*), shouldn't it? (This may be useful
information anyway, no matter if the sidewalks are mapped separately
or not.) If it isn't possible to specify the widths, the information
to which sidewalk a crosswalk belongs could be given with a relation.

> In contrast,  pedestrian ways that are directly connected to one another can 
> be analyzed using any transportation network software and are compatible with 
> common OSM routers.

This is true, but mapping sidewalks with separate ways isn't
unproblematical either, especially if there aren't any marked
crosswalks: mapping unmarked crossings is often impossible because not
verifiable, but not mapping crossings results in disconnected
sidewalks. A particular problem are T crossings with sidewalks on both
sides of both streets, as for example here:

https://www.openstreetmap.org/node/32860990

Besides, mapping sidewalks with separate ways requires quite good
aerial imagery, which unfortunately isn't available everywhere
(example [1]). Furthermore it takes much more time than adding
sidewalk=* tags and you can break more – people that map sidewalks
ways often don't map unmarked crossings, which results in unusable
sidewalks (example [2]).

Compared to sidewalk, mapping pedestrian lanes with separate
highway=footway ways would even be more problematical, because the
pedestrian lanes are a part of the carriageway of the road and (in
some countries) can also be used by vehicles in order to make way for
oncoming traffic.

[1]: https://www.openstreetmap.org/#map=19/47.04825/8.30513
[2]: https://www.openstreetmap.org/way/682152784

Regards

Markus

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Re: [Tagging] Feature Proposal - RFC - Pedestrian lane

[Nick Bolten]

> The following pedestrian router already seems to work quite well with
sidewalk=* tags and highway=crossing nodes (examples):

When something "works" 99.9% of the time, it's the edge cases that matter.
But, because this is a network problem, a single edge case can disrupt tons
of paths.

Here's an example (drawing from your very nice diagrams):
https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/File:Ambiguous_sidewalk_and_crossing_via_street_metadata.svg

Attempting to use this schema requires doing two things:

(1) We infer a set of sidewalk paths from street metadata, usually guessing
about the offset distance. This ends up being an important source of errors
in the routago example in Zollikofen.

(2) We infer street crossings from guesswork that uses street topology,
distances, and any other number of rules we can make up because we don't
actually know for sure which crossings can be used by which sidewalks.

In the case of the marked crossing on top, which sidewalks can use it
(i.e., how should we create our routable graph)? Visually, it is clear that
the marked crossing is to be used by the sidewalk associated with the
rightmost street. However, a heuristic approach could easily identify it as
usable by the other street's sidewalk as well: it is in the correct
topological location (a 'right turn' from an incoming sidewalk) and a short
distance from the intersection (x). Even with more complex heuristics, like
assigning crossings to the nearest intersection, we still get errors
depending on the exact sizes of x and y: perhaps, sometimes, it's usable by
both. This would be no issue were the connections mapped directly.

There's a similarly complex example here:
https://www.openstreetmap.org/#map=19/47.71953/-122.31794. Attempting to
figure out exactly which crossings can be used by which sidewalks is a bit
of a mess due to the proximity of different sidewalk endpoints to nearby
crossings.

This guesswork means the pedestrian paths are uncertain. Imagine if our
street networks were like this, not knowing how they connect to oen another!

>
https://www.routago.de/pedestrian-routing/?map=46.9802955,7.421488,19=46.9798388,7.4200845=46.9800291,7.4229276
>
https://www.routago.de/pedestrian-routing/?map=46.9932946,7.4567288,18=46.9936495,7.4545938=46.9927603,7.4568951

These examples exhibit other issues, though I'll skip the first one because
they're small. The second (Zollikofen) has very clear errors resulting from
this schema: when crossing Zelweg, routago predicts four maneuvers: (1)
turn left to get to the start of the crossing, (2) turn right and get on
the crossing, (3) get off the crossing and turn right (while not called
out, it's visually there), and (4) turn left to get on the sidewalk (or
pedestrian lane, as it is one).

None of those maneuvers are actually required or implied by the on-ground
realities:
https://www.mapillary.com/app/?lat=46.99333843=7.45498349=17=photo=wtKKmazts0SR6pNE8J_8FA=0.8600724394834813=0.514884292476=0.
You can see the crossing on the left. In reality, the path taken by most
pedestrians will be direct, requiring no particular turns of any kind.

These errors are an artifact of not knowing where the sidewalks and
crossings actually interface and having to guess about them.

Aside from producing errors, this guesswork is highly technical and not
something the vast majority of interested data consumers can do, which
limits the value of the data to a very small set of computer scientists or
extremely enthusiastic programmers + GIS enthusiasts with a background in
graph theory, geospatial analysis, and constructive geometric methods. In
contrast,  pedestrian ways that are directly connected to one another can
be analyzed using any transportation network software and are compatible
with common OSM routers.

> I use highway=footway + footway=link connect steps and sidewalks to a
road, in order to retain the real length and geometry of the steps or
sidewalks and to indicate that these aren't steps or a sidewalk anymore,
but part of the carriageway of the road. Other mappers seem to use this
scheme too (already 743 uses and only every 7th is from me).

Neat! I really like that proposal and would be interested in chatting about
other potential use cases.

Thanks again,

Nick

On Sat, Nov 16, 2019 at 2:25 AM Markus  wrote:

> On Tue, 12 Nov 2019 at 23:54, Nick Bolten  wrote:
> >
> > > You mean a situation like this?:
> >
> > > https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/File:Sidewalk_and_crossing.svg
> >
> > One very similar to that, yes! I think I normally wouldn't add
> sidewalk=both to any length of the highway=residential. Is that a typical
> thing to do? I would assume that meant the highway=residential street had
> its own short piece of sidewalk, when it actually doesn't.
>
> You're right, sidewalk=both doesn't make sense in that example. I use
> this tagging only when the junction and the sidewalks are curved. I've
> updated the drawing to better represent the situation.
>
> > The challenge 

Re: [Tagging] Feature Proposal - RFC - Pedestrian lane

[Markus]

On Mon, 18 Nov 2019 at 02:48, John Willis via Tagging
 wrote:
>
> I use “unmarked crossing” for all connections of sidewalks where they 
> dead-end and have to be connected into the road.

If there's a second sidewalk or a pedestrian lane on the opposite side
of the road, this may make sense. But if there's just a sidewalk that
ends and pedestrians don't cross the road there (example [1]),
footway=crossing + crossing=unmarked seems wrong to me.

[1]: https://www.openstreetmap.org/way/547007384

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Re: [Tagging] Feature Proposal - RFC - Pedestrian lane

[John Willis via Tagging]

I use “unmarked crossing” for all connections of sidewalks where they dead-end 
and have to be connected into the road. 

could be useful there too. there is is no “sideway_link” or similar “footway 
routing link” to use, so unmarked crossing works really well, espcially 
considering it is where peds leave a sidewalk and interact with road traffic 
directly.  

> On Nov 18, 2019, at 6:27 AM, Markus  wrote:
> 
> indicate that these connections aren't sidewalks

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Re: [Tagging] Feature Proposal - RFC - Pedestrian lane

[Markus]

On Sun, 17 Nov 2019 at 17:32, Martin Koppenhoefer
 wrote:
>
> Generally, if this was agreed, wouldn’t we have to split every footway that 
> connects to a road for its last 2 or so meters, because that’s actually the 
> road (in a model that takes the extension of the ways into account)?

That's a good question. I think it's useful to do so with steps,
because otherwise they're distorted too much (especially the very
short ones), and with connections of a sidewalk with a road, to
indicate that these connections aren't sidewalks. On the other hand, i
think it's less useful to do so for footpaths or any path or road that
connects with another. But i probably wouldn't prevent people from
doing so.

Regards

Markus

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Re: [Tagging] Feature Proposal - RFC - Pedestrian lane

[Martin Koppenhoefer]

sent from a phone

> On 16. Nov 2019, at 11:25, Markus  wrote:
> 
> I use highway=footway + footway=link connect steps and sidewalks to a
> road, in order to retain the real length and geometry of the steps or
> sidewalks and to indicate that these aren't steps or a sidewalk
> anymore, but part of the carriageway of the road. Other mappers seem
> to use this scheme too (already 743 uses and only every 7th is from
> me).


there are also some highway:virtual=* and virtual:highway=* mostly used with 
footway values (footway also path and pedestrian), but the sum of both is 
around 130 so it’s used even less.

Generally, if this was agreed, wouldn’t we have to split every footway that 
connects to a road for its last 2 or so meters, because that’s actually the 
road (in a model that takes the extension of the ways into account)?

Cheers Martin 
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Re: [Tagging] Feature Proposal - RFC - Pedestrian lane

[Markus]

On Tue, 12 Nov 2019 at 23:54, Nick Bolten  wrote:
>
> > You mean a situation like this?:
>
> > https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/File:Sidewalk_and_crossing.svg
>
> One very similar to that, yes! I think I normally wouldn't add sidewalk=both 
> to any length of the highway=residential. Is that a typical thing to do? I 
> would assume that meant the highway=residential street had its own short 
> piece of sidewalk, when it actually doesn't.

You're right, sidewalk=both doesn't make sense in that example. I use
this tagging only when the junction and the sidewalks are curved. I've
updated the drawing to better represent the situation.

> The challenge I'm describing is in reliably associating the crosswalk with 
> the pedestrian paths. After all, the crosswalk is a node on a different 
> street way. I know that I could do it 99.x% of the time, but it will require 
> using some graph traversal approaches that most people aren't familiar with. 
> Plus, those cases where I couldn't reliably determine it could be very 
> important. I suspect this is one of the reasons I haven't found anyone using 
> these data in concert (sidewalk=both + highway=crossing) to do pedestrian 
> routing.

The following pedestrian router already seems to work quite well with
sidewalk=* tags and highway=crossing nodes (examples):

https://www.routago.de/pedestrian-routing/?map=46.9802955,7.421488,19=46.9798388,7.4200845=46.9800291,7.4229276
https://www.routago.de/pedestrian-routing/?map=46.9932946,7.4567288,18=46.9936495,7.4545938=46.9927603,7.4568951

(However, it seems that it prefers minor roads and paths over distance too much:

https://www.routago.de/pedestrian-routing/?map=46.9931482,7.4576354,17=46.9936495,7.4545938=46.991809,7.4570239)

> > I would simply connect the sidewalk way with the road where the
> sidewalk ends (and map a barrier=kerb + kerb=* node) and add
> pedestrian_lane=* to the road starting from where the pedestrian lane
> begins.
>
> So there would be a segment of footway=sidewalk that is not actually on a 
> sidewalk? I've been unsure about what to do in similar situations, like how 
> to connect footways to roads without implying there's literally a footway on 
> top of the road. Probably worth its own, separate discussion (it was 
> discussed previously, but without conclusion), so I won't elaborate.

I use highway=footway + footway=link connect steps and sidewalks to a
road, in order to retain the real length and geometry of the steps or
sidewalks and to indicate that these aren't steps or a sidewalk
anymore, but part of the carriageway of the road. Other mappers seem
to use this scheme too (already 743 uses and only every 7th is from
me).

https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Proposed_features/Tag:footway%3Dlink

Best regards and a nice weekend to all of you

Markus

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Re: [Tagging] Feature Proposal - RFC - Pedestrian lane

[Catonano]

Il giorno mar 12 nov 2019 alle ore 23:54 Nick Bolten  ha
scritto:

> You make a very good point! A road can have a pedestrian lane, shoulder,
> both, or neither, so it wouldn't make any sense for a pedestrian lane to be
> a type of shoulder. The widths do vary quite a bit as well, regionally.
>
> > You mean a situation like this?:
>
> > https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/File:Sidewalk_and_crossing.svg
>
> One very similar to that, yes! I think I normally wouldn't add
> sidewalk=both to any length of the highway=residential. Is that a typical
> thing to do? I would assume that meant the highway=residential street had
> its own short piece of sidewalk, when it actually doesn't.
>
> The challenge I'm describing is in reliably associating the crosswalk with
> the pedestrian paths. After all, the crosswalk is a node on a different
> street way. I know that I could do it 99.x% of the time, but it will
> require using some graph traversal approaches that most people aren't
> familiar with. Plus, those cases where I couldn't reliably determine it
> could be very important. I suspect this is one of the reasons I haven't
> found anyone using these data in concert (sidewalk=both + highway=crossing)
> to do pedestrian routing.
>
> Mapping for a router isn't the end-all-be-all of this kind of data, of
> course, but it is one thing that would be hard to do with this tagging
> schema. I'd be interested to know if there are other data consumer plans
> for the data, since use does dictate what the schema looks like. Making
> streets be ways was a conscious choice informed by routing, for example!
>

I didn't know that representing streets as lines was a choice made to
support routing

Interesting

This made routing for cyclists, pedestrians and impaired people more
difficult

And I hope everyone can see why that's disappointing

Choosing a representation always has political effects

In this regard, I find this talk quite on point

http://opentranscripts.org/transcript/programming-forgetting-new-hacker-ethic/



> > I would simply connect the sidewalk way with the road where the
> sidewalk ends (and map a barrier=kerb + kerb=* node) and add
> pedestrian_lane=* to the road starting from where the pedestrian lane
> begins.
>
> So there would be a segment of footway=sidewalk that is not actually on a
> sidewalk? I've been unsure about what to do in similar situations, like how
> to connect footways to roads without implying there's literally a footway
> on top of the road. Probably worth its own, separate discussion (it was
> discussed previously, but without conclusion), so I won't elaborate.
>
> > There is a pedestrian lane along the the south-eastern part of the road
> Reichenbachstrasse. On the opposite side there are public steps as well as
> many (currently unmapped) driveways and private footpaths. Mapping the
> pedestrian lane as a separate way would either make it disconnected from
> the steps, driveways and footpaths on the opposite side of the road or you
> would need to add many highway=footway connections from the pedestrian lane
> to the steps, driveways and footpaths, which would make the map very
> confusing.
>
> > Therefore i strongly advise against mapping pedestrian lanes as separate
> ways.
>
> > By the way, the same problem occurs with sidewalks mapped as separate
> ways.
>
> Yes, it's a trade-off: the actual pedestrian path's primary connections
> and attributes vs. its association with the street. Neither are actually
> perfect options, which is why I'm suggesting the possibility of redundant
> tagging. Ideally, we'd come up with a universal strategy for relating these
> ways together, but I don't want to monopolize this proposal!
>
> > I'm not a programmer and therefore don't have concrete plans to use this
> data, but i imagine (and hope) that pedestrian routers could use this data
> to prioritise roads with pedestrian lanes and to tell blind people on which
> side of the road they should walk.
>
> Maybe it would be helpful to set up a meeting with some organizations that
> serve the visually impaired along with programmers that build routing
> software. We (Taskar Center) might be able to help with that sort of
> meeting, and it would be even better to have organizations from different
> cultures and geographies involved as well. As-is, I think the challenge of
> reliably associating paths with crosswalks is a big one for mapping for
> routing for the blind.
>
>
There are 2 talks given at the last osm2019 that I think are on par with
what you are thinking

You might want to get in touch with their authors

This is the first one: Pedestrian Routing
The author argues like effective pedestrian routing
in which the author argues how a previous focusing on routing for cars has
made pedestrian routing more difficult (and he presents a quite complicated
algorithm for extracting information useful for pedestrian routing)

https://media.ccc.de/v/sotm2019-1265-routing-for-humans


The second one is this one: 

Re: [Tagging] Feature Proposal - RFC - Pedestrian lane

[Nick Bolten]

You make a very good point! A road can have a pedestrian lane, shoulder,
both, or neither, so it wouldn't make any sense for a pedestrian lane to be
a type of shoulder. The widths do vary quite a bit as well, regionally.

> You mean a situation like this?:

> https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/File:Sidewalk_and_crossing.svg

One very similar to that, yes! I think I normally wouldn't add
sidewalk=both to any length of the highway=residential. Is that a typical
thing to do? I would assume that meant the highway=residential street had
its own short piece of sidewalk, when it actually doesn't.

The challenge I'm describing is in reliably associating the crosswalk with
the pedestrian paths. After all, the crosswalk is a node on a different
street way. I know that I could do it 99.x% of the time, but it will
require using some graph traversal approaches that most people aren't
familiar with. Plus, those cases where I couldn't reliably determine it
could be very important. I suspect this is one of the reasons I haven't
found anyone using these data in concert (sidewalk=both + highway=crossing)
to do pedestrian routing.

Mapping for a router isn't the end-all-be-all of this kind of data, of
course, but it is one thing that would be hard to do with this tagging
schema. I'd be interested to know if there are other data consumer plans
for the data, since use does dictate what the schema looks like. Making
streets be ways was a conscious choice informed by routing, for example!

> I would simply connect the sidewalk way with the road where the
sidewalk ends (and map a barrier=kerb + kerb=* node) and add
pedestrian_lane=* to the road starting from where the pedestrian lane
begins.

So there would be a segment of footway=sidewalk that is not actually on a
sidewalk? I've been unsure about what to do in similar situations, like how
to connect footways to roads without implying there's literally a footway
on top of the road. Probably worth its own, separate discussion (it was
discussed previously, but without conclusion), so I won't elaborate.

> There is a pedestrian lane along the the south-eastern part of the road
Reichenbachstrasse. On the opposite side there are public steps as well as
many (currently unmapped) driveways and private footpaths. Mapping the
pedestrian lane as a separate way would either make it disconnected from
the steps, driveways and footpaths on the opposite side of the road or you
would need to add many highway=footway connections from the pedestrian lane
to the steps, driveways and footpaths, which would make the map very
confusing.

> Therefore i strongly advise against mapping pedestrian lanes as separate
ways.

> By the way, the same problem occurs with sidewalks mapped as separate
ways.

Yes, it's a trade-off: the actual pedestrian path's primary connections and
attributes vs. its association with the street. Neither are actually
perfect options, which is why I'm suggesting the possibility of redundant
tagging. Ideally, we'd come up with a universal strategy for relating these
ways together, but I don't want to monopolize this proposal!

> I'm not a programmer and therefore don't have concrete plans to use this
data, but i imagine (and hope) that pedestrian routers could use this data
to prioritise roads with pedestrian lanes and to tell blind people on which
side of the road they should walk.

Maybe it would be helpful to set up a meeting with some organizations that
serve the visually impaired along with programmers that build routing
software. We (Taskar Center) might be able to help with that sort of
meeting, and it would be even better to have organizations from different
cultures and geographies involved as well. As-is, I think the challenge of
reliably associating paths with crosswalks is a big one for mapping for
routing for the blind.

> Thanks. The content of this page seems to be identical to this PDF
document by the FHWA i mentioned in some of my earlier messages:

Oh, you're right! Sorry I missed that!

Thanks again for raising this tagging question and proposal!

Best,

Nick

On Mon, Nov 11, 2019 at 2:02 PM Markus  wrote:

> Hi Nick,
>
> Please excuse my late reply. :(
>
> On Wed, 6 Nov 2019 at 00:53, Nick Bolten  wrote:
> >
> > ## Similarities to shoulders and an opportunity to figure out how to tag
> them.
> >
> > Would it be fair to say that the only differences between this feature
> and a shoulder are (A) it has paint designating where pedestrians should go
> and (B) it has some right-of-way implications? Because it's often the only
> pedestrian option in rural areas near me, I'd appreciate having a way to
> tag shoulders and then enhancing them with a subtag. e.g., something like
> shoulder=left/right/both + shoulder:right=pedestrian_lane.
>
> Another difference is the width: in Switzerland, pedestrian lanes are
> about 1.5 m wide and shoulders about 4.5 m. But in my opinion their
> different purpose is reason enough to use different tags. Besides,
> cycle lanes already 

Re: [Tagging] Feature Proposal - RFC - Pedestrian lane

[Martin Koppenhoefer]

sent from a phone

> On 11. Nov 2019, at 23:02, Markus  wrote:
> 
> Another difference is the width: in Switzerland, pedestrian lanes are
> about 1.5 m wide and shoulders about 4.5 m. But in my opinion their
> different purpose is reason enough to use different tags.


+1, these are lanes, they are part of the carriageway, the shoulder is not.

Cheers Martin 

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Re: [Tagging] Feature Proposal - RFC - Pedestrian lane

[Markus]

Hi Nick,

Please excuse my late reply. :(

On Wed, 6 Nov 2019 at 00:53, Nick Bolten  wrote:
>
> ## Similarities to shoulders and an opportunity to figure out how to tag them.
>
> Would it be fair to say that the only differences between this feature and a 
> shoulder are (A) it has paint designating where pedestrians should go and (B) 
> it has some right-of-way implications? Because it's often the only pedestrian 
> option in rural areas near me, I'd appreciate having a way to tag shoulders 
> and then enhancing them with a subtag. e.g., something like 
> shoulder=left/right/both + shoulder:right=pedestrian_lane.

Another difference is the width: in Switzerland, pedestrian lanes are
about 1.5 m wide and shoulders about 4.5 m. But in my opinion their
different purpose is reason enough to use different tags. Besides,
cycle lanes already have a separate tag. (Even though cyclists are
also allowed to use shoulders in the USA afaik.) And finally,
shoulder:right=pedestrian_lane doesn't make much sense semantically.

> ## Challenges of mapping pedestrian paths as street attributes
>
> As proposed, this tag would apply to streets. I understand the appeal - it's 
> a minimal change from current maps and the feature is basically just paint on 
> a street - but I think there are also some potential risks to describing the 
> pedestrian path this way that would be valuable to discuss. Examples:
>
> (1) Intersections, particularly ones with marked crossings. 
> sidewalk=left/right/no/both has difficulties with this as well. Put yourself 
> in the shoes of someone trying to analyze the paths a pedestrian could take 
> using this tag to determine that there is a path using pedestrian lanes and a 
> crosswalk. There is a street way (way 1) with pedestrian_lane=right that 
> continues through an intersection. There is a crosswalk tagged as 
> highway=crossing, crossing=uncontrolled on another way that shares a node 
> with another street way (way 2). How do you proceed and associate these path 
> data so that you can reliably say that a pedestrian path exists that uses 
> that crosswalk? I believe it will require some fairly nerdy graph analysis I 
> think it could be a significant hurdle for using this data.

You mean a situation like this?:

https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/File:Sidewalk_and_crossing.svg

I add a sidewalk=both tag to the road section up to the crosswalk,
then sidewalk=no to the rest of the road that doesn't have a sidewalk.
This may look a bit strange in this example, but usually the sidewalks
are more curved at crossroads, like for example here:

https://www.openstreetmap.org/way/744453045

(The "Stadt Bern 10cm/25cm (2012)" imagery has the highest resolution
at this place.)

I suggest the same mapping for pedestrian lanes.

> (2) Transitions to other pedestrian paths, such as sidewalks. Pedestrian 
> lanes are sometimes used as a means to have a "temporary" sidewalk-like 
> feature, pending some future construction of actual sidewalks. There will be 
> sidewalks that are half-built, then transition into a pedestrian lane. How do 
> we tag that situation, given a separately-mapped sidewalk?

I would simply connect the sidewalk way with the road where the
sidewalk ends (and map a barrier=kerb + kerb=* node) and add
pedestrian_lane=* to the road starting from where the pedestrian lane
begins.

> With the above issues in mind, what would you think about allowing 
> highway=footway, footway=pedestrian_lane as a possibly redundant tagging 
> option?

Consider this example:

https://www.openstreetmap.org/#map=19/46.99149/7.45448

There is a pedestrian lane along the the south-eastern part of the
road Reichenbachstrasse. On the opposite side there are public steps
as well as many (currently unmapped) driveways and private footpaths.
Mapping the pedestrian lane as a separate way would either make it
disconnected from the steps, driveways and footpaths on the opposite
side of the road or you would need to add many highway=footway
connections from the pedestrian lane to the steps, driveways and
footpaths, which would make the map very confusing.

Therefore i strongly advise against mapping pedestrian lanes as separate ways.

By the way, the same problem occurs with sidewalks mapped as separate ways.

> ## Usefulness / data consumption
>
> Knowing where pedestrian lanes are would be very useful, in my opinion, but 
> the devil is always in the details. Do you have any examples of how this data 
> could be consumed downstream? Not saying there always has to be a data 
> consumer, but the exercise could reveal advantages between different 
> approaches.

I'm not a programmer and therefore don't have concrete plans to use
this data, but i imagine (and hope) that pedestrian routers could use
this data to prioritise roads with pedestrian lanes and to tell blind
people on which side of the road they should walk.

> ## Other sources
>
> A potentially helpful resource during these international comparisons: 
> 

Re: [Tagging] Feature Proposal - RFC - Pedestrian lane

[Nick Bolten]

At the risk of going down a rabbit hole, I'm going to suggest some ways to
think about this that will hopefully spark some discussion related how this
tag could be used with pedestrian navigation.

## Similarities to shoulders and an opportunity to figure out how to tag
them.

Would it be fair to say that the only differences between this feature and
a shoulder are (A) it has paint designating where pedestrians should go and
(B) it has some right-of-way implications? Because it's often the only
pedestrian option in rural areas near me, I'd appreciate having a way to
tag shoulders and then enhancing them with a subtag. e.g., something like
shoulder=left/right/both + shoulder:right=pedestrian_lane.

## Challenges of mapping pedestrian paths as street attributes

As proposed, this tag would apply to streets. I understand the appeal -
it's a minimal change from current maps and the feature is basically just
paint on a street - but I think there are also some potential risks to
describing the pedestrian path this way that would be valuable to discuss.
Examples:

(1) Intersections, particularly ones with marked crossings.
sidewalk=left/right/no/both has difficulties with this as well. Put
yourself in the shoes of someone trying to analyze the paths a pedestrian
could take using this tag to determine that there is a path using
pedestrian lanes and a crosswalk. There is a street way (way 1) with
pedestrian_lane=right that continues through an intersection. There is a
crosswalk tagged as highway=crossing, crossing=uncontrolled on another way
that shares a node with another street way (way 2). How do you proceed and
associate these path data so that you can reliably say that a pedestrian
path exists that uses that crosswalk? I believe it will require some fairly
nerdy graph analysis I think it could be a significant hurdle for using
this data.

(2) Transitions to other pedestrian paths, such as sidewalks. Pedestrian
lanes are sometimes used as a means to have a "temporary" sidewalk-like
feature, pending some future construction of actual sidewalks. There will
be sidewalks that are half-built, then transition into a pedestrian lane.
How do we tag that situation, given a separately-mapped sidewalk?

With the above issues in mind, what would you think about allowing
highway=footway, footway=pedestrian_lane as a possibly redundant tagging
option?

## Usefulness / data consumption

Knowing where pedestrian lanes are would be very useful, in my opinion, but
the devil is always in the details. Do you have any examples of how this
data could be consumed downstream? Not saying there always has to be a data
consumer, but the exercise could reveal advantages between different
approaches.

## Other sources

A potentially helpful resource during these international comparisons:
https://www.fhwa.dot.gov/environment/bicycle_pedestrian/publications/small_towns/page05.cfm.
The FHWA defines standards in the United States.

Best,

Nick

On Fri, Nov 1, 2019 at 2:13 PM Markus  wrote:

> Hi everyone,
>
> Following the recent discussion about pedestrian lanes (marked lanes
> on a roadway, designated for pedestrians), i've now written a proposal
> page for a new key pedestrian_lane=*:
>
> https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Proposed_features/Pedestrian_lane
>
> Best regards
>
> Markus
>
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Re: [Tagging] Feature Proposal - RFC - Pedestrian lane

[Martin Koppenhoefer]

sent from a phone

> Il giorno 3 nov 2019, alle ore 09:59, Jan Michel  ha 
> scritto:
> 
> This depends on legislature. In Germany, on normal streets (not on motorways) 
> the shoulder is not only for emergency use and pedestrians, but also for all 
> slower vehicles. These should drive there to allow faster vehicles to 
> overtake them.


right, there are exceptions e.g. in Germany for slow vehicles to reduce their 
speed and wait on the shoulder so that faster vehicles can overtake them. 
Generally you may not drive there, while parking is admitted (on 
non-motorways/motorroads). 

For pedestrian lanes I would expect the opposite: you may drive on them but not 
park.


Cheers Martin 
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Re: [Tagging] Feature Proposal - RFC - Pedestrian lane

[Markus]

On Sat, 2 Nov 2019 at 20:37, Clifford Snow  wrote:
>
> I like your proposal but think it needs to clarify the difference between a 
> pedestrian lane and a shoulder [1]. In the US, most (many?) states allow 
> pedestrians to walk on shoulders if there is no sidewalk/footway, with the 
> exception of motorways. How would a mapper know if this is a shoulder or a 
> pedestrian lane?

Thanks for your input. I didn't think about that because here in
Switzerland shoulders only seem to exist on motorways and trunk roads
and because of their difference in appearance (shoulder: continuous
white line [1], pedestrian lane: continuous yellow line with yellow
diagonal stripes [2]). In the United States, it seems that pedestrian
lanes are marked accordingly. [3] I guess that in other countries,
pedestrian lanes are also marked or signed accordingly or have a
different appearance like in Switzerland, but when in doubt, it is
certainly better to not tag a lane as pedestrian lane. I'll add a
warning to the proposal page.

[1]: https://www.mapillary.com/map/im/vhd1RZj0JXfpHIZ1uHj0xA
[2]: https://www.mapillary.com/map/im/6NiPeYEe87G_ex49SqwFtg
[3]: 
https://www.fhwa.dot.gov/environment/bicycle_pedestrian/publications/small_towns/fhwahep17024_lg.pdf,
p. 102 (5-7).

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Re: [Tagging] Feature Proposal - RFC - Pedestrian lane

[Jan Michel]

On 03.11.19 08:19, Martin Koppenhoefer wrote:

Il giorno 2 nov 2019, alle ore 20:37, Clifford Snow  
ha scritto:

I like your proposal but think it needs to clarify the difference between a 
pedestrian lane and a shoulder [1]. In the US, most (many?) states allow 
pedestrians to walk on shoulders if there is no sidewalk/footway, with the 
exception of motorways. How would a mapper know if this is a shoulder or a 
pedestrian lane?


you may not drive on the shoulder but you can drive on the pedestrian lane.


This depends on legislature. In Germany, on normal streets (not on 
motorways) the shoulder is not only for emergency use and pedestrians, 
but also for all slower vehicles. These should drive there to allow 
faster vehicles to overtake them.



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Re: [Tagging] Feature Proposal - RFC - Pedestrian lane

[Michael Brandtner via Tagging]

The only pedestrian lane that I know, in my German hometown, is separated from 
the rest of the road by a solid line. So it's not legal for vehicles to drive 
on it.
Michael 

 
  Am So., Nov. 3, 2019 at 8:20 schrieb Martin 
Koppenhoefer:   

sent from a phone

> Il giorno 2 nov 2019, alle ore 20:37, Clifford Snow  
> ha scritto:
> 
> I like your proposal but think it needs to clarify the difference between a 
> pedestrian lane and a shoulder [1]. In the US, most (many?) states allow 
> pedestrians to walk on shoulders if there is no sidewalk/footway, with the 
> exception of motorways. How would a mapper know if this is a shoulder or a 
> pedestrian lane?


you may not drive on the shoulder but you can drive on the pedestrian lane.

Cheers Martin 
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Re: [Tagging] Feature Proposal - RFC - Pedestrian lane

[Martin Koppenhoefer]

sent from a phone

> Il giorno 2 nov 2019, alle ore 20:37, Clifford Snow  
> ha scritto:
> 
> I like your proposal but think it needs to clarify the difference between a 
> pedestrian lane and a shoulder [1]. In the US, most (many?) states allow 
> pedestrians to walk on shoulders if there is no sidewalk/footway, with the 
> exception of motorways. How would a mapper know if this is a shoulder or a 
> pedestrian lane?


you may not drive on the shoulder but you can drive on the pedestrian lane.

Cheers Martin 
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Re: [Tagging] Feature Proposal - RFC - Pedestrian lane

[Alessandro Sarretta]

Hi Clifford,

On 02/11/19 20:35, Clifford Snow wrote:

Markus,
I like your proposal but think it needs to clarify the difference 
between a pedestrian lane and a shoulder [1]. In the US, most (many?) 
states allow pedestrians to walk on shoulders if there is no 
sidewalk/footway, with the exception of motorways. How would a mapper 
know if this is a shoulder or a pedestrian lane?


AFAIK shoulders are, in general, thought for vehicles in case of an 
emergency and present in big highways 
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shoulder_(road)), while pedestrian lanes 
are made explicitly for pedestrians, especially in small roads in an 
urban context.


Ale


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Re: [Tagging] Feature Proposal - RFC - Pedestrian lane

[Clifford Snow]

Markus,
I like your proposal but think it needs to clarify the difference between a
pedestrian lane and a shoulder [1]. In the US, most (many?) states allow
pedestrians to walk on shoulders if there is no sidewalk/footway, with the
exception of motorways. How would a mapper know if this is a shoulder or a
pedestrian lane?

Tomorrow I'm attending a conference on pedestrian mapping and hope to get
the opportunity to discuss pedestrian lanes with our department of
transportation officials.

[1] https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Key:shoulder

Best,
Clifford

On Fri, Nov 1, 2019 at 2:12 PM Markus  wrote:

> Hi everyone,
>
> Following the recent discussion about pedestrian lanes (marked lanes
> on a roadway, designated for pedestrians), i've now written a proposal
> page for a new key pedestrian_lane=*:
>
> https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Proposed_features/Pedestrian_lane
>
> Best regards
>
> Markus
>
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-- 
@osm_washington
www.snowandsnow.us
OpenStreetMap: Maps with a human touch
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Re: [Tagging] Feature Proposal - RFC - Pedestrian lane

[Markus]

On Fri, 1 Nov 2019 at 22:54, Martin Koppenhoefer  wrote:
>
> currently your proposal is a description of the physical appearance of the 
> feature, but for highways what is needed are usually functional and legal 
> definitions. A cycleway is a way designated for bicycles, a motorway excludes 
> slow traffic, and so on.

And a pedestrian lane is a designated lane for pedestrians. Sorry, but
i don't understand how the way i defined it differs from how the
features you mentioned are defined.

> To make sense of a pedestrian lane it would either have to bear implications 
> on different modes of transport (e.g. in Switzerland motor vehicles can use 
> this lane, unlike sidewalks or other footways), or we would have to state 
> these for every instance of it (like we do for example with gates).
> currently the proposal doesn’t say anything about it.

Adding all the legal informations (use by all vehicles/bicycles
allowed/prohibited, use by pedestrians mandatory/encouraged) to every
single pedestrian lane in one country would be highly inefficient and
is also discouraged in our "Don't map your local legislation, if not
bound to objects in reality" rule. [1] I'd suggest collecting the
legal informations in a table on the wiki. Later, when we will
hopefully have a way to tag defaults, this informations could then be
transferred to the boundary=administrative relation.

Of course, if a single pedestrian lane has a locally marked or signed
exception, that single pedestrian lane should be tagged accordingly.

[1]: 
https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Good_practice#Don.27t_map_your_local_legislation.2C_if_not_bound_to_objects_in_reality

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Re: [Tagging] Feature Proposal - RFC - Pedestrian lane

[Martin Koppenhoefer]

currently your proposal is a description of the physical appearance of the 
feature, but for highways what is needed are usually functional and legal 
definitions. A cycleway is a way designated for bicycles, a motorway excludes 
slow traffic, and so on. 
To make sense of a pedestrian lane it would either have to bear implications on 
different modes of transport (e.g. in Switzerland motor vehicles can use this 
lane, unlike sidewalks or other footways), or we would have to state these for 
every instance of it (like we do for example with gates).
currently the proposal doesn’t say anything about it.

Cheers Martin 
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