[Tagging] Feature Proposal - RFC - Pedestrian lane

[Markus]

On Tue, 12 Nov 2019 at 23:54, Nick Bolten <nbolten at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > You mean a situation like this?:
>
> > https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/File:Sidewalk_and_crossing.svg
>
> One very similar to that, yes! I think I normally wouldn't add sidewalk=both to any length of the highway=residential. Is that a typical thing to do? I would assume that meant the highway=residential street had its own short piece of sidewalk, when it actually doesn't.

You're right, sidewalk=both doesn't make sense in that example. I use
this tagging only when the junction and the sidewalks are curved. I've
updated the drawing to better represent the situation.

> The challenge I'm describing is in reliably associating the crosswalk with the pedestrian paths. After all, the crosswalk is a node on a different street way. I know that I could do it 99.x% of the time, but it will require using some graph traversal approaches that most people aren't familiar with. Plus, those cases where I couldn't reliably determine it could be very important. I suspect this is one of the reasons I haven't found anyone using these data in concert (sidewalk=both + highway=crossing) to do pedestrian routing.

The following pedestrian router already seems to work quite well with
sidewalk=* tags and highway=crossing nodes (examples):

https://www.routago.de/pedestrian-routing/?map=46.9802955,7.421488,19&start=46.9798388,7.4200845&ziel=46.9800291,7.4229276
https://www.routago.de/pedestrian-routing/?map=46.9932946,7.4567288,18&start=46.9936495,7.4545938&ziel=46.9927603,7.4568951

(However, it seems that it prefers minor roads and paths over distance too much:

https://www.routago.de/pedestrian-routing/?map=46.9931482,7.4576354,17&start=46.9936495,7.4545938&ziel=46.991809,7.4570239)

> > 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.
>
> So there would be a segment of footway=sidewalk that is not actually on a sidewalk? I've been unsure about what to do in similar situations, like how to connect footways to roads without implying there's literally a footway on top of the road. Probably worth its own, separate discussion (it was discussed previously, but without conclusion), so I won't elaborate.

I use highway=footway + footway=link connect steps and sidewalks to a
road, in order to retain the real length and geometry of the steps or
sidewalks and to indicate that these aren't steps or a sidewalk
anymore, but part of the carriageway of the road. Other mappers seem
to use this scheme too (already 743 uses and only every 7th is from
me).

https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Proposed_features/Tag:footway%3Dlink

Best regards and a nice weekend to all of you

Markus