[Talk-us] sidewalks and trails

[Josh Doe]

This probably should belong on tagging, so I've cc'ed it there, also
you could add to the talk page.

That's a good question, and something I've thought about recently as
well. I've really liked the footway=crossing tag, even more so than
footway=sidewalk, so I've started using path=crossing as well. This of
course opens the possibility of path=sidewalk, cycleway=sidewalk and
cycleway=crossing, and who knows what else.

I think "sidewalk" might be an unfortunate term, since what we're
really talking about is a way/"path" that is associated with a roadway
to provide an alternate path of travel for non-motor vehicles, usually
pedestrians but could include cyclists as well. After using
footway=sidewalk for a while now, I tend to see it as a temporary
measure, in other words that once type=street relations are created
for every street+sidewalk combination, we'll no longer need the tag.
In that sense footway=sidewalk is more of a hint to data consumers and
a guide for future contributors to "fix" the situation be creating a
relation (perhaps assisted by a semi-automatic tool to generate
street+sidewalk pairs). If you take this interpretation of things then
path=sidewalk is perfectly fine, in spite of sidewalk being a bit of a
misnomer.

Regards,
-Josh

On Tue, May 3, 2011 at 8:39 PM, PJ Houser
<stephanie.jean.houser at gmail.com> wrote:
> Sidewalks as separate ways.
>
> I am working on some multi-use paths that travel on sidewalks for some
> portions, like the I-205 corridor in Portland, Oregon. Mapping sidewalks as
> a separate way is now an approved practice, and I'd like to do this for the
> parts of the trail that become a sidewalk for awhile. However, the approved
> tagging is highway=footway, footway=sidewalk. The trails I'm working on are
> multi-use, thus they should be highway=path, so would I need to add
> path=sidewalk to indicate they are a sidewalk?
>
>  http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Proposed_features/Sidewalk_as_separate_way
> --
> PJ Houser
> Trimet
> GIS intern, 503-962-5711 (office)
>
>
>
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