[Talk-GB] traffic island mapping / harmful detail?

[David Woolley]

On 08/04/2021 15:25, Martin Wynne wrote:
> Nor does a footpath extend from a stile in the fence to a road's 
> centreline. No walker ever walks to the centre of the road after 
> crossing a stile. But every time I map that short bit of way as simply 
> highway=yes for routing, someone changes it to footpath.

Maps are always abstractions.  The problem here is that different places 
and different people are using different levels of abstraction on the 
same map.

Roads in route planner maps and as far as OS 1:50,000  paper maps, do 
abstract roads as the centre lines, and, whilst paper and raster version 
then represent those centre lines as having a width, related to road 
type, not real width, digital map represent them with no width at all.

As such, continuing a footpath, as a footpath, seems the right thing to 
do, even if you split the carriageways on the road.

Mapping the stub as  highway=yes implies that motor vehicles can turn at 
right angles to the traffic, even if they can't get very far.