[Talk-GB] Stiles (and gates) on roads

[Robert Whittaker (OSM)]

On 9 October 2012 23:15, Philip Barnes <phil at trigpoint.me.uk> wrote:
> I have recently found a fairly common problem with stiles and pedestrian
> gates where footpaths join roads.
>
> Often a stile, or gate tagged for access on foot only, is used at the
> junction with a road. Routers then assume the road is for foot only and
> route around.
[snip]
> Is it something that can be added to keep-rights list of problems?

I think it would be really good if it could be.

I'd have thought that any barrier=* node that has more than two
highway=* way segments meeting at it* should be considered an error,
as it's then ambiguous which routes through the node the barrier
applies to. (* This could be more than two ways ending at the node, or
more than one way with an interior point on the node, or one way with
an interior point and one way with an end point.)

For example, suppose that there's a stile, with one footpath coming
from one side, but two leaving from the other. If the two paths on the
same side meet at the stile node, it would suggest that you need to
cross the stile to pass from one to the other, when in fact you don't.
You only need to cross the stile when going to or from the single path
on the other side. Instead, the two paths on the same side should meet
at a separate node a small distance from the style, with a short
linking segment between that node and the stile.

Robert.

-- 
Robert Whittaker