[Talk-ca] Sidewalks

[Daniel Begin]

Bonjour  all

To add my comments on this topic, I never add "ordinary" sidewalks except if
they are "physically" separated from the street (not adjacent to). If I had
to map them, I would use sidewalk:* tags.

I still think as Richard wrote: "I have roads and other things to map; I'll
worry about sidewalks later". However, having this sidewalk wonderings only
means is that the map is really getting detailed!

 

Cheers,

Daniel

 

From: Richard Weait [mailto:richard at weait.com] 
Sent: February-02-13 06:15
To: Talk-CA OpenStreetMap
Subject: Re: [Talk-ca] Sidewalks

 

On Fri, Feb 1, 2013 at 4:08 PM, nicholas ingalls
<nicholas.ingalls at gmail.com> wrote:

My personal preference is to enable the JOSM sidewalk style and then use the
sidewalk:right sidewalk:left, sidewalk:both, or sidewalk:none tags on the
actual street. The footpaths are just about useless (as in the example
above) as they are not related to the street in anyway. So the routing
engine couldn't say turn left onto Maple Street. It could only  say turn
left. If the tags are on the actual street and not separately mapped, it is
much easier for a routing engine.

 

I think Bernie has raised an interesting question with a complicated group
of replies.  I don't think that we will find One Universally True Answer.  

As a mapper, I don't always add "ordinary" sidewalks where I see them.
Initially, I thought, "I have roads and other things to map, I'll worry
about sidewalks later."  It was the early days of OSM.  Available aerial
imagery was much more limited and much lower resolution.  When higher
resolution aerial imagery became available to us, I had a bit of a "freak
out".  "Oh my!!! Look at all the PIXELS!!!  I can map sidewalks, and, and,
and, and, everything!!!"  And so I did.  I added sidewalks in some of the
places that already had roads and schools and parks and rivers, etc.  

Now, I'm not as consistent, I guess.  I'll add interesting walkways that
aren't simply parallel to a street.  I think adding a pedestrian path
between neighbourhoods, and adjacent, non-adjoining streets is worthwhile.
As a pedestrian, I use those paths to cut the walking distance to the store,
or school.  But I generally don't add the ordinary sidewalks.  Except when I
do add them.  

The points raised by Gordon and Harald, above, are important.  There are
routing services for pedestrians and cyclists and they can use
separately-drawn sidewalks in ways that they can not extract data from road
centerline parameters.  I make an effort to properly connect new objects
that I map with existing sidewalks, even if I'm not planning to map more
sidewalks immediately.  

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