[Talk-ca] Tagging sidewalks as separate ways and issues with bicycle routing

[Nate Wessel]

Which routing engines are causing problems exactly? Routing a bicycle on 
a sidewalk may be appropriate/reasonable in some cases and over short 
distances where one could be instructed to dismount and walk. I'd be 
interested to see some of the problematic routes that are being 
suggested to see if there isn't a more elegant way of resolving this.

I personally only use explicit access tags where there is clear signage 
indicating some type of special access restriction. Otherwise the 
default should be assumed. Routing engines /should/ be able to 
accommodate region differences in default values without needing to 
manually tag millions of ways. Whether they can or do allow that is a 
problem for the people developing the routing engines.

Nate Wessel, PhD
Planner, Cartographer, Transport Nerd
NateWessel.com <https://www.natewessel.com>

On 2020-04-03 10:39 a.m., John Whelan wrote:
> I'd recommend bicycle=no and I live in Ottawa.  In Ottawa footpaths 
> that connect in general are bicycle=yes as they come under municipal 
> regulation but a sidewalk on a highway comes under provincial 
> legislation which bans bicycles on sidewalks.  Sparks street is fun I 
> think you are not permitted to ride your bicycle but I'm unsure if 
> this is provincial, municipal or it might even be NCC which is federal 
> of course.
>
> In the UK they are banned by law but in certain cities the Chief 
> Constable has stated the law will not be enforced within the police 
> force boundaries as a letter of interpretation.  It might be nice for 
> Ottawa to do the same sometime but there again we have City of Ottawa 
> police, OPP, RCMP and of course the PPS.
>
> Cheerio John
>
> James wrote on 2020-04-03 10:25 AM:
>> I don't think it's more tagging for the renderer as much as it's 
>> being more specific(more data) to specify a abstract view: without 
>> knowledge of Canadian/Provincial/Municipal laws about biking on 
>> sidewalks.
>>
>> I think Montreal and Gatineau are more enforced as Ottawa it is 
>> illegal to bike on the sidewalk, but people are still doing it, but 
>> that's beside the point.
>>
>> On Fri., Apr. 3, 2020, 10:18 a.m. Pierre-Léo Bourbonnais via Talk-ca, 
>> <talk-ca at openstreetmap.org <mailto:talk-ca at openstreetmap.org>> wrote:
>>
>>     Hi!
>>
>>     I would like to start a discussion on how we should deal with
>>     sidewalks tagged separately, like it is is done in downtown
>>     Ottawa and like we are starting to do in the Montreal region.
>>
>>     The issue is that by default highway=footway with or without
>>     footway=sidewalk should have an implicit bicycle=no by default
>>     according to this page:
>>     https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/OSM_tags_for_routing/Access_restrictions
>>
>>     However, some osm users told me I should tag them with bicycle=no
>>     everywhere because routing engines use sidewalks for bicycle
>>     routing which is illegal in most part of Canada.
>>
>>     What are your thoughts on this ? Should we adapt to routing
>>     engines or should routing engines fix the issue themselves?
>>
>>     Thanks!
>>
>>
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