The discussion of the sidewalk issue seems to have stopped. I added
some comments in the discussion section of the wiki last week, but
there have been no further comments there or here in nearly a week.
I think each of the proposals (sidewalks as separate ways, and
sidewalks as attributes of streets) has merit in different
circumstances, and the choice of which to use should be optional. Like
Josh Doe, I've been mapping sidewalks as separate ways, but that is
because I've done most of my mapping in the suburban areas where I
work and live. I've tried it a bit in downtown Tampa, and down there I
think it makes more sense to tag them as attributes of roads. Except
for a few block faces and intersections, where the city hasn't made
curb/kerb cuts for wheelchairs yet. This means that some intersections
have some sidewalks where wheelchairs can cross in some directions,
but not in all. And for these I would code the sidewalks as separate
ways.
With regard to routing, sidewalks on college campuses, in parks, and
in cemeteries may be interior to a large area bounded by streets, and
as a result some may not have an associated street to use for a name.A
few sidewalks on a few campuses may have names of their own ("Slant
Walk" on the Miami University (Ohio) campus, is one example), but most
don't. So routing will need to come up with some other way to refer to
them. This is an unresolved issue, but it's one for the routing, not
for OSM to deal with (if there is no name, there is no name to tag).
As an example on the University of South Florida campus, the route
description at the left simply gives a list of way IDs. This is from
an instance of the open-source OpenTripPlanner running on a test
server in our lab, not configured yet for heavy use.
http://go.cutr.usf.edu:8083/opentripplanner-webapp/index.html?fromPlace=28.058592509101,-82.416268340788&toPlace=28.059785450843,-82.412180654249&arr=Depart&min=QUICK&maxWalkDistance=6400&mode=WALK&itinID=1&submit&date=04/02/2011&time=10:01%20pm
Where a street parallels a street, but at a distance, I share the
concerns about using relations to associate sidewalks with their
streets. Would it work to add a tag "associated_street" and then
simply list the name of the street? For example, highway=footway,
associated_street="East Fowler Avenue". A value of "none" could be
coded if the sidewalk does not parallel a street.
I hope there will be more discussion of these two proposals.
Ed Hillsman
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