[Tagging] When does highway=footway become highway=pedestrian?

[Minh Nguyen]

Vào lúc 01:15 2021-10-31, Martin Koppenhoefer đã viết:
>> On 31 Oct 2021, at 02:07, Minh Nguyen <minh at nguyen.cincinnati.oh.us> wrote:
>>
>> Other kinds of highway=* area=yes have been controversial and at least one renderer has consciously removed support for them as a tagging mistake.
> 
> 
> there’s a fundamental difference of pedestrian / footway highways mapped with area=yes and other, vehicle related highways: vehicles are typically required to drive on the right (or left in countries who like to make things different) even in absence of road markings, while pedestrians can walk in any direction and on any side. That’s why area:highway is a better tag for highways for vehicles, as long as it’s the area of a road and not a big unorganized paved area where you can drive wherever you want.
> “Only 2 times the usage” is still double.

Yes, pedestrians have more degrees of freedom than four-wheel vehicles 
in countries with relatively strict enforcement of traffic laws. I'm not 
sure this reasoning holds up as well in countries with less channelized 
traffic in practice. By the way, I'm sure you've just encouraged some 
mappers to revisit the idea of importing sidewalk areas en masse across 
whole counties. ;-)

area:*=* is for micromapping, while highway=* area=yes is for the 
essence of the thing. The essence of a pedestrian plaza is its shape, 
even if the ideal router would calculate a beeline dash through it and a 
less-than-ideal router still needs us to map that shortest path 
manually. By contrast, the most remarkable aspect of a footway or 
crosswalk is its shortest path, just as with a road, but a redundant 
area can be a form of micromapping. [1]

The distinction between a pedestrian plaza and an ordinary footway is a 
bit fuzzy. In some places I'm familiar with, pedestrian plazas have 
distinct names and fill in gaps in the street grid, rather than being 
associated with other streets, so that's a good rule of thumb locally. 
But elsewhere, it could be a subjective decision based on whether a 
highway=pedestrian line or area would be too prominent compared to other 
paths around it. Highway classification is usually a bit subjective like 
that.

[1] https://lists.openstreetmap.org/pipermail/tagging/2021-May/061481.html

-- 
minh at nguyen.cincinnati.oh.us