While I don’t doubt your assertion about the places you know of, in places I know of this is quite common. Many cycleways where I live are multi-use paths that also serve as sidewalks for pedestrians. I usually tag highway=cycleway + footway=sidewalk for these. This may seem an odd combination to you, but it communicates that the way serves both as a cycleway and as a sidewalk for pedestrians.
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Do you tag cycleway=sidewalk or footway=sidewalk?
What should it mean? It is a shared path and along the street?
You can comunícate this more clear with foot=designated + bicycle=designated
I think I used cycleway=sidewalk a few times since I felt a bit weird pairing footway=* with highway=cycleway, but now I don’t worry about that and just use footway=sidewalk since that is the common tag for indicating a sidewalk. To me it means the way is built to serve as the sidewalk along a street and as a cycleway.
I don’t find access tags alone to be clearer. What type of traffic is able to use the way is a bit of a different concern than what the way fundamentally is.
My understanding of the designated value is, that it mixes access=yes with the way is designated for.
For me it would be fine to use cycleway= sidewalk as additional tag to the access-tags to tell that the cycleway is on the sidewalk, but not instead access-tags.
Would you expect something differen if cycleway=sidepath is tagged?
cycleway=sidepath suggests to me only that the cycleway goes alongside a road, but not necessarily that it also serves as a sidewalk for pedestrians like footway=sidewalk does.
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There are different ways of tagging multi-use paths. Some use highway=path + foot=designated + bicycle=designated, others use highway=cycleway + foot=designated, and I wouldn’t be surprised if there are highway=footway + bicycle=designated.
There are also cycleways with sidewalks (exactly like roads with sidewalks). We tag them as highway=cycleway + sidewalk=*.
highway=cycleway + footway=sidewalk seems different. IMO, the same thing cannot be both a cycleway and sidewalk. A way can accommodate several groups, but it can’t be several types of way at once.
foot=yes|designated, bicycle=yes|designated, etc. seem to be the standardised tags for who/what a way accommodates.
So why not tag highway=path/cycleway/footway + foot=designated + bicycle=designated?
Whenever there’s a discussion on how to tag cycling and walking infrastructure, I normally also ask the question “Does this make sense if we did the same with cars involved?”.
In this case, does it make sense to tag highway=residental + footway=sidewalk to indicate that pedestrians are allowed to/meant to use it (regardless of actual sidewalk present)? Or would we see that as a taggig error and correct it? The tagging is out there…
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That seems to lose.the information that this is a sidewalk alongside a street or road, as distinct from a random path independent of the street network.
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If it genuinely is a sidewalk, then surely highway=footway + footway=sidewalk. If bicycles are allowed on this sidewalk, then additionally bicycle=yes.
If it genuinely is a cycleway, with pedestrians allowed, or a combined path, see above.
If it’s important to tag a cycleway/footway as being adjacent to another road, there is is_sidepath=*.
Also, I disagree with the implication that cycleways and footways aren’t part of the street network… That’s a bit car centric, isn’t it.
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using cycleway=sidewalk to convey both “sidepath” and “shared use” is neither documented nor is it immediately understandable as this discussion here shows.
for the alongside a street use is_sidepath.
I had a look around your changeset areas for highway=cycleway + footway=sidewalk and looked more closely at two of them, Essex Rd in Essex Junction and Dorset St in South Burlington.
Dorset St seems to be a segregated cycleway and footway, based on signage. So whatever tagging for a segregated path is correct in your area, would be my solution. For NO, it’s highway=cycleway + foot=designated + segregated=yes.
Essex Rd seems to be some sort of footway, as there is a signed cycle lane on the road and no signs on the side. Around here, pavements are paved all the way to the kerb, and there’s no grass verge, but I assume this is a US sidewalk.
At one point, the cycle lane ends and there are dropped kerbs to indicate that cyclists are meant to (be able to) move over to the sidewalk. It seems it’s a de facto multi-use path from there on, or all the way if you prefer. That makes it a highway=footway + footway=sidewalk + bicycle=yes in my opinion.
Yes, it is a segregated cycleway/footway and is the sidewalk for Dorset Street. It is tagged as you suggest plus footway=sidewalk to indicate that it is a sidewalk of a street rather than an independent cycle/footway.
It may seem odd that transportation planners would put bicycle lanes and a bicycle path on the same road, but that is what they’ve done here. The Essex Road sidewalk is a multi-use path and is a designated bicycle route (there are signs). There is a point where it diverges from the road and becomes an independent path, no longer serving as a sidewalk.
Why not? It seems perfectly logical to me where a path for cyclists and pedestrians exists along a road instead of a pedestrian only sidewalk. The way serves two purposes.
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Just as a quick note, for a Finnish perspective, footway=sidewalk has a specific (legal) meaning in Finland.
In the Finnish traffic law, cycling is prohibited on dedicated footways. Only children under the age of twelve can cycle on footways, and even then only if “they do not significantly inconvenience pedestrians” (as loosely translated from the legalese).
However, the law and statutes explicitly state that whenever a footway follows a road and is structurally separated from it (usually with a raised kerb), they need not be marked as such with a traffic sign. Nevertheless, the restrictions on bicycling apply to them. So, in Finland footway=sidewalk in OSM is used to denote a footway on which cycling is expressly prohibited, even if they are not signed as such (and they usually aren’t). The sidewalk tag thus either implicitly denotes a cycling restriction, or documents/explains an explicit bicycle=no tag to routing programs.
In Finland, the situation is complicated by the fact that our Freedom to Roam laws otherwise grant near universal rights to both bicycle and walk on nearly all non-traffic-signed roads.
In Finland, there are cycleways that look exactly like sidewalks (that is, they are structurally separated from the road they follow by a kerb), but they must always have a traffic sign that allows bicycle traffic.
So, in a way, =sidewalk and highway=cycleway are not strictly speaking mutually exclusive. However, the footway=sidewalk tag on a highway=footway expresses a slightly different situation. There is no clear need for a cycleway=sidewalk tag precisely because there always has to be a traffic sign present, allowing bicycle traffic on a “sidewalk” (and thus the highway-tag changes from a footway to a cycleway).
A sidepath is like a deluxe sidewalk. Either can serve cyclists and pedestrians simultaneously, but the reason for building a sidepath is usually to serve as a bike path in an area where cyclists generally don’t bike on the sidewalk. There’s typically extra room to encourage cycling while minimizing stress on pedestrians. In most places I’ve mapped, sidepaths are paved in asphalt instead of concrete tiles, for a better cycling experience. Sidepaths are often referred to as sidewalks, especially by motorists who wouldn’t care about this distinction, but it is a real distinction at least in urban planning, pedestrian advocacy, and traffic engineering.
Compare the diagrams on these two guides (written for an American audience):
In an ideal world, we’d be tagging side-things like this:
| Side-thing | Tag the roadway as… | Tag the side-thing as… | Or if paths are your thing… |
|---|---|---|---|
| Sidewalk | sidewalk=separate |
highway=footwayfootway=sidewalkbicycle=yes/no |
highway=pathpath=sidewalkbicycle=yes/nofoot=yes/no |
| Sidepath | sidepath=separate (unnecessary?) |
highway=cyclewaycycleway=sidepathfoot=yes/no |
highway=pathpath=sidepathbicycle=yes/nofoot=yes/no |
Each of these tags is in use, though is_sidepath=yes is more common than cycleway=sidepath, footway=sidepath, and path=sidepath combined.
No one is using footway=separate or footway:both=separate, so why is cycleway=separate or cycleway:both=separate a thing? Back before we started mapping sidewalks as separate ways, no one ever tagged the roadway as footway:both=sidewalk. We just assumed that a sidewalk would be the only kind of pedestrian infrastructure anyone would associate with a street, an assumption that breaks when we finally consider sidepaths – or pedestrian lanes, for that matter. By contrast, there has long been a distinction between bike lanes, shared lanes, and cycle tracks, even back when cycle tracks were mapped as part of the street.
cycleway=sidewalk manages to conflate two different kinds of infrastructure and two different modes of transportation while proliferating this broken assumption. Bleh.
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cycleway=separate is used instead
What is the meaning of cycleway=sidewalk at a highway=cycleway?
- The cycleway is along a street
- The cycleway is along a street and shared with pedestians
- The cycleway is on a sidewalk (along a street shared with pedestrians)
- it is nonsense
- other
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voters
I’m aware of that. (See two paragraphs down.) The table shows what would be the most rational organization of these tags, if we could start over. As it is, the meaning of cycleway=* is already quite diluted in practice.
the tag for footways in this context is sidewalk
https://taginfo.openstreetmap.org/tags/sidewalk=separate#overview
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It’s a bit disingenious to ignore what I wrote about how serving two purposes and being two things are fundamentally different considerations, and how tagging multiple purposes is already solved with a more developed schema, and then asserting that because it serves two purposes, it must be two things. It doesn’t help move this discussion forward.
There is is_sidepath for that purpose, which has the benefit of not confusingly making a way be two different types of way at once.
I’m aware of that. (See the table above.) What I’m highlighting is the apparent inconsistency between how we treat sidewalks and sidepaths, and simultaneously between how we treat footways and cycleways.
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I would suggest to change the Wiki like this:
This tag is used to describe a highway=cycleway in more detail.
The tag is in use, but the meaning is neither defined nor clear. The sence of the tag is controversial. (discussion)Consider using additional or alternative tags to clearly describe the characteristics of the cycleway.
- is_sidepath=yes (The cycleway is along the road)
- foot=designated/yes (Pedestrians are also allowed to use the cycleway)
- segregated=yes/no (Pedestrians have their own area or share the path with cyclists)
See also:
- cycleway=sidepath
- footway=sidewalk
- highway=footway
- highway=path
Suggestions for improvements welcome
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