[OSM-newbies] pedestrian or footway?

[Paul Johnson]

Cartinus wrote:

> On Tuesday 10 November 2009 23:42:08 Paul Johnson wrote:
>> Chris Hunter wrote:
>> > What about the living_street tag?
>>
>> In the US, a living street is called a "bicycle boulevard."  These ways
>> typically only have through lanes for bicycles, with motor traffic
>> often limited to only one direction and required to turn at major
>> intersections (preventing it's use as a rat-run route for impatient
>> motorists with broken legs).  Segregated pedestrian facilities (such as
>> sidewalks) are often (but not always) provided in an effort to move
>> pedestrians out of the way of faster moving, high-volume bicycle
>> traffic.
>
> Which means it is not a living street at all, because in a living street the 
> pedestrians are the most important users.

I believe them to be culturally equivallent:  Even the smallest North
American cities tend to be far more spread out than the cities you find
elsewhere in the world:  There's often simply no feasable walking route
due to distance, nor room to fix the problem.  The US Manual on Uniform
Traffic Control Devices (MUTCD) does not have any mention of living
streets at all, but the Oregon (and likely a few other states) do have
bicycle boulevards in their MUTCD addendums.

On the other paw, reconfiguring a suitable tertiary or
(preferably) residential street to favor bicycles has benefits for
pedestrians.  It's easier to cross a bicycle-filled street where
operators have a full range of visibility, rather than a vehicle cab,
which often has large blind spots at the A posts, and psychological
blind spots for anything right of the centerview mirror, and tend to
be popular among pedestrians as well as cyclists.  And even where
pedestrians and parked vehicles share a space, it's often far easier and
safer to do so than it is on a street that isn't a bike boulevard.