[Talk-us] Sidewalks as footpaths

[Wolfgang Zenker]

* Mike N <niceman at att.net> [140430 18:21]:
> On 4/30/2014 11:38 AM, William Morris wrote:
>> Is there a general OSM policy on marking sidewalks as highway=footway?
>> User dolphinling appears to have gone crazy in downtown Burlington,VT
>> tracing the sidewalks and calling them footways.

>    It does add a great deal of clutter to those maps that render 
> footways.   But for those who wish to be able to use OSM data for 
> accurate pedestrian or handicapped routing, the only way is to draw all 
> the sidewalks, curb cuts, and pedestrian crossings.

AFAICS there are basically two ways in use to get information on sidewalks
into OSM:
- map sidewalks as separate ways
- use http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Key:sidewalk to add information
  on sidewalks to the main highway.

Both methods should be usable for pedestrian routing; using separate
ways allows for more detailed micro-mapping, e.g. width and paving of
the sidewalk, but is a lot more difficult to get it right because you
need to connect these ways with the main highway everywhere a pedestrian
could cross the highway.

Wolfgang