[OSM-talk] sidewalks

[OJ W]

On Fri, Aug 7, 2009 at 10:15 PM, Martin
Koppenhoefer<dieterdreist at gmail.com> wrote:
>> How is routing going to know that you can cross the road if you're on
>> a sidewalk footpath and there's another one 8m away across a
>> residential road?
>
> AFAIK that's an open question. IMHO this will have to be indicated by relations.

would it be useful to have a 'sidewalk' tag on such footpaths, which
can be interpreted as "you may travel from this footpath to the
nearest highway without restriction"?

(similar to how the addr:housenumber tags attach themselves to the
nearest road, without being joined in the data-model)