[Talk-GB] Footway to Sidewalk?

[Adam Hoyle]

On 21 Aug 2012, at 14:47, Andy Allan wrote:

> On 21 August 2012 13:27, SomeoneElse <lists at mail.atownsend.org.uk> wrote:
> 
>> Although I'd usually oppose such Americanisms, in this case "sidewalk" is
>> unambiguous in a way that "footway" (or "pavement") isn't, and on the forum
>> thread (and several years ago on a mailing list, when this was previously
>> discussed) I said that I wouldn't object to someone changing a
>> "footway=left" that I had mapped to "sidewalk=left".  Not everyone agreed
>> with me, though...
> 
> I'm entirely supportive of using "sidewalk" when discussing pavements
> in the context of OSM. "footway" is even more confusing to OSMers than
> even "pavement" would be! For years now I've been using the term
> "sidewalk", and explaining why that's the best word for it, whenever
> I've discussed the topic.

I agree - from the wiki http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Tag:highway%3Dfootway a footway seems unambiguously to be what americans call a sidewalk.

It's totally confused me, so in the bit of UK countryside I edit I have added tons of ways with highway=footway tags through woods, fields etc, when in fact I am pretty sure they should really be highway=path tags. I realised this a little while ago, so this thread is timely.

Do please correct me if I'm still confused as I'm slowly going through the process of re-tagging them from footway to path.

> However, don't let that mean that I support a poorly documented and
> poorly executed bulk edit.

likewise

Adam
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.openstreetmap.org/pipermail/talk-gb/attachments/20120821/c7816c0e/attachment.html>