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

Minh Nguyen minh at nguyen.cincinnati.oh.us
Wed Oct 27 22:56:19 UTC 2021


Vào lúc 17:36 2021-10-26, Clifford Snow đã viết:
> I certainly don't see anything wrong with this pedestrian way since 
> there is also a routable highway=path in the middle. (highway=footway + 
> footway=sidewalk would be better) It does show that there is a wide 
> pedestrian way which is accurate. Without the routable path, then just a 
> highway=pedestrian will block people from using it. (I've heard of one 
> proprietary router that does route on areas but I'm not aware of any 
> open source router that does.)

Without the path or sidewalk going through, the highway=pedestrian area 
wouldn't _block_ routing per se, as long as it's connected to other 
footpaths. But it would force the route to hug the edge of the 
pedestrian area. (Good for finding your way out of a labyrinth, not so 
good for running errands.) More likely, the route would go a different 
way altogether.

Among the open-source OSM-based routers [1], OpenTripPlanner is the only 
one I know of that can route through areas. Unfortunately, computing the 
visibility graph is a resource-intensive process, so apparently few 
deployments enable it. [2] Evan Siroky gave a talk at Connect 2020 that 
discusses some additional challenges with pedestrian paths and areas, 
which may be of interest. [3]

Vào lúc 07:00 2021-10-26, nathan case đã viết:
 > I’m wondering at what point, if at all, a highway=footway becomes
 > highway=pedestrian (i.e., a pedestrian area)?

This question reminds me of one downside of mapping sidewalks and 
crosswalks as ways: without some form of generalization, a pedestrian 
plaza is almost guaranteed to end shortly before a road intersection, at 
an intersection with a footway=sidewalk and a footway=crossing. In a 
typical style that renders pedestrian plazas as prominently as roads, 
the gap would look like a bug. On the other hand, the pedestrian plaza 
at [4] ends in a pedestrian scramble, so connecting to the 
highway=pedestrian way to the road network would be messy. It isn't a 
major problem in my opinion, but it is awkward.

[1] https://github.com/osmlab/osm-planning/issues/17#issuecomment-390387196
[2] https://osmus.slack.com/archives/CDDASU2KX/p1602705461029900
[3] https://youtu.be/NRO6cPs-Pz4?t=113
[4] <https://osm.org/go/TZMjZDW76?m=>

-- 
minh at nguyen.cincinnati.oh.us





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