Hi Nick, Please excuse my late reply. :(
On Wed, 6 Nov 2019 at 00:53, Nick Bolten <nbol...@gmail.com> 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: > https://www.fhwa.dot.gov/environment/bicycle_pedestrian/publications/small_towns/page05.cfm. > The FHWA defines standards in the United States. 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: https://www.fhwa.dot.gov/environment/bicycle_pedestrian/publications/small_towns/fhwahep17024_lg.pdf Best regards Markus _______________________________________________ Tagging mailing list Tagging@openstreetmap.org https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/tagging
