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

Mateusz Konieczny matkoniecz at tutanota.com
Wed Oct 27 11:06:38 UTC 2021




Oct 26, 2021, 16:00 by nathancase at outlook.com:

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> Hi all,
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> I’ve just posted this on the Wiki discussion page (> https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Talk:Tag:highway%3Dpedestrian#.22For_town_centres_and_civic_areas.22> ) but the thread is a little old and I know not everyone reads the Wiki anyway…
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> I’m wondering at what point, if at all, a highway=footway becomes highway=pedestrian (i.e., a pedestrian area)? 
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There are several things here
- sidewalk tags (sidewalk as attribute of road)
- highway=footway 
- highway=pedestrian for pedestrian road
- area:highway=footway for area of footway/sidewalk (mapped as an extra)
- highway=pedestrian area=yes for pedestrian squares
- highway=pedestrian area=yes misused for footway/sidewalk areas

Note that the last one claim may be controversial, some claim that mapping
sidewalk as highway=pedestrian area=yes in addition or instead to
highway=footway line is OK.

In some places such mapping is really popular.


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> I have an example (> https://www.openstreetmap.org/way/365487665#map=18/52.44601/-1.81904> ) of a sidewalk that has been mapped as a pedestrian area. It is certainly quite wide (around 7-8 m in places) and is located within a town centre/civic area. It even has painted markings (since COVID-19 pandemic began) splitting the direction of travel for pedestrians - though this is, of course, entirely ignored by everyone walking there.
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> However, it is, fundamentally, just a wide paved area for pedestrians that runs parallel and adjacent to the main carriageway (road) – i.e. a sidewalk.
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> Do we define particularly wide sidewalks as pedestrian areas? They do seem to match most of the criteria listed on the Wiki but it doesn’t seem to quite fit for me.
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Linking photos would be useful. In principle I can imagine place that can be treated 
as a dual carriageway, one of them mapped as highway=pedestrian line.
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