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

[nathan case]

I think the fundamental issue is that area=yes shouldn’t be used on highways as they are generally linear features.

However, with highway=pedestrian and highway=footway, pedestrians are often free to use the highway in whatever direction they like. Linearity doesn’t apply.

It’s become established to use highway=pedestrian, area=yes for pedestrian squares/plazas but these are both very different features to large pedestrian sidewalks etc. Using this combination of tags on features that don’t match the definition of highway=pedestrian seems wrong.

Using area:highway=* is a great way of showing width (particularly when the width is variable) of a highway feature. It doesn’t imply anything about breaking the linearity of the element.

But, area=yes shows that the highway is not linear – which I think works for both highway=pedestrian and highway=footway. It shows a router that any route across this area is suitable for routing.

Still not really sure though! :D


From: Mateusz Konieczny via Tagging <tagging at openstreetmap.org>
Sent: 31 October 2021 10:55
Cc: Mateusz Konieczny <matkoniecz at tutanota.com>; Tag discussion, strategy and related tools <tagging at openstreetmap.org>
Subject: Re: [Tagging] When does highway=footway become highway=pedestrian?




Oct 31, 2021, 11:10 by dieterdreist at gmail.com<mailto:dieterdreist at gmail.com>:


sent from a phone
On 31 Oct 2021, at 10:08, Mateusz Konieczny via Tagging <tagging at openstreetmap.org<mailto:tagging at openstreetmap.org>> wrote:


highway=pedestrian area=yes represents pedestrian square area


no, a pedestrian square area can be represented like this, but not all such objects are (on) squares (quite often they are parts of squares).
Do you mean that pedestrian square area ( highway=pedestrian area=yes )
is sometimes part of square area (place=square)?

(maybe I could phrase it better)

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