[OSM-newbies] pedestrian or footway?

[Aspen Swartz]

> ------------------------------
>
> Message: 7
> Date: Thu, 12 Nov 2009 13:13:52 -0800
> From: Paul Johnson <baloo at ursamundi.org>
> Subject: Re: [OSM-newbies] pedestrian or footway?
> To: newbies at openstreetmap.org
> Message-ID:
>        <20091112211405.8181.72318.XPN at paddington.network.ursamundi.org>
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> 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.
>

I wouldn't have picked "living street" as the tag for streets that
cars are prohibited or minimally allowed on, myself- I've never heard
of a "living street" before OSM- but if we stick with the precise
administrative descriptions of the tags as they were described in the
country of origin, we won't be able to have a coherent world map.
City planners in different countries and cities have different
approaches, and then again some cities aren't planned.  I don't think
the map should have any comment on good city planning; it should
simply describe how the thing in question can be used, and guide the
user to a notion of what they might find when they arrive onsite.
Because of founder effects, we have a lot of British and Dutch and
German-flavored tags.

(Like "drain".  To me, a drain empties your sink or bathtub.  It is
not an object that any reasonable person would want to map.  Unless
you're mapping sewer grates.  I think the closest approximation in my
vocabulary for what "drain" means in OSM would be drainage ditch.  But
I would never have created the tag "drainage ditch" before creating
tags for "dry gulch", "culvert" "ford" and "cattle guard"- much more
important features in my part of the world than drainage ditches.  If
OSM had started in Eastern Washington State, Dutch people would now be
wondering (in Dutch) "what is this dry gulch tag and how can I tag my
drains?")

Anyhow, I think we can use the "living street" tag where it seems to
fit more or less, and not disqualify some streets because in
municipality X, fire trucks are allowed on living streets and in
municipality Y they aren't.  My take on the generalized meaning of
"living street" is a street that is not for cars, whether cars are
strictly prohibited or just strongly discriminated against.  That is
partly because I don't see any other tags that mean that.

stepping off my soapbox now-
Aspen

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> End of newbies Digest, Vol 33, Issue 21
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