[talk-au] Sidewalks in Australia

[Sam Wilson]

I normally do separate ways, because it's easier to more accurately map 
the topology.

I just pretend I'm pushing a wheelbarrow (or stroller or am using a 
wheelchair) and wonder what sort of connectivity and data I'd want to be 
able to navigate. For instance, it might be possible as you say for lots 
of people to cross a road from pavement to pavement anywhere along the 
road, but that's not true of everyone. Instead, I think we should map 
the crossings (highway=footway and footway=crossing), even better with 
tactile paving, curb ramp info, etc. — and that's harder when the 
pavements are included in the road's way (as sidewalk tags).

But yeah, it's patchy and there doesn't seem to be much of a standard! :-)

On 10/8/21 10:55 am, Tom Brennan wrote:
> I've been using the current lockdown to walk and cycle all of the 
> streets of my LGA (Willoughby), and I've been checking back to OSM to 
> see if there's anything needing updating. For the most part it's just 
> minor edits here and there.
>
> I had a couple of questions, one of which I'll address in this email:
>
> highway=footway, footway=sidewalk or highway=*, sidewalk=*
>
> Is there a view for Australia as to which method of mapping sidewalks 
> (yes, I'm using the US term because it's unambiguous here) should be 
> used? https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Sidewalks
>
> At the moment there are a lot of separately mapped sidewalks in the 
> Willoughby LGA, but it's patchy at best. There are streets with 
> sidewalks mapped next to other unmapped streets, there are lots of 
> connectivity issues, sidewalks end unexpectedly. I don't intend to put 
> too much effort into cleaning it up, but where I do make changes, I'd 
> prefer to make things better rather than worse!
>
> Hence my asking.
>
> I'm not much of a fan of separately mapped sidewalks, because there 
> tend to be an infinite number of places you can walk/cross etc, and 
> any mapping fails to capture this. But I'm not too concerned with 
> opening a debate if it's already been prosecuted! Just with what the 
> Australian "standard" is.
>
> cheers
> Tom
> ----
> Canyoning? try http://ozultimate.com/canyoning
> Bushwalking? try http://bushwalkingnsw.com
>
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