Toby Murray-2 wrote > Wait, what is the consensus method for tagging sidewalks? I haven't done a > lot of them but I know I've added a few as footways myself.
I have struggled with how best to map sidewalks in the US as well. In european cities my impression is that sidewalks are generally directly attached as part of the road, and they are typically just another (special) "lane". So there you typically don't map the sidewalks as separate. Footways in those settings generally are real footways and thus deserve the prominence the style sheet gives them. But in the US (at least in suburbia), the sidewalks are often much more detached from the road with wide grass strips between them. They also sometimes aren't entirely parallel to the road. So there it makes more sense to map them as separate OSM ways rather than to use a sidewalk key on the main road. However, the separate ways also can have disadvantages for pedestrian routing. As a pedestrian, I would typically just cross a (non busy) road where ever I need to. If the sidewalks and roads are mapped separately, the router can't just tell you to cross the road though, but needs to route you to the next mapped intersection. One also needs to add a number of connection ways between roads and sidewalks which in that form doesn't really exist in reality, making the maps look even more messy. Not sure there is an ideal solution for this and we will likely see both explicit footway mapping and mapping as part of the road. It would still be good to come to somewhat more of a consensus on the topic though. Kai -- View this message in context: http://gis.19327.n5.nabble.com/Sidewalks-as-footpaths-tp5804729p5804760.html Sent from the USA mailing list archive at Nabble.com. _______________________________________________ Talk-us mailing list Talk-us@openstreetmap.org https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-us
