[Talk-us] sidewalks and trails

[Serge Wroclawski]

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?

"Approved" is an odd term in OSM.

There's no editor support for it, no renderer support for it, etc.

I'd suggest that if you have paths, they're not sidewalks, they're
paths. And if you have sidewalks along roads, I should bring up my
proposal for simple sidewalk tagging back on the tagging list. I
already have editor support, and have been talking with the mapnik
folks about ways to make renderers support it, as well as routers.

The problem with doing sidewalks as separate ways is that unless you
use a relation, you lose the road data, and there's no relation which
is supported for this. That was never voted on or brought up in the
proposal, which is why I thought it was so ill-conceived.

- Serge