Normaly the oneway=yes only effects vehicles. (eg. highway=residential oneway=yes)
How to tag oneway for pedestians?
with an explict oneway:foot=yes?
What is the result of:
highway=footway oneway=yes (oneway for pedestrians or not?)
highway=path oneway=yes (oneway for all or only for vehicle)
highway=pedestrian oneway=yes (oneway also for pedestians or only for vehicle)
sidewalk:right:oneway=yes (oneway also for pedestians or only for vehicle)
foot:backward=* and its counterpart foot:forward=* are used by some mappers to indicate a feature can only be used in one direction by pedestrians. In the past, some mappers have used oneway=yes for this purpose, but it goes against the definition of the oneway-tag which applies only to vehicles. Therefore also the tag oneway:foot=yes should be avoided (because a subtag should not contradict the main tag).
O.k. I remembered not fully correct on this: “Do not use access-tags to specify exceptions to oneway-tags. Exceptions to oneway-tags must also be specified with oneway-tag.”
But this is only about exeptions
Which is why some people prefer foot:oneway=no.
But having oneway=no mean something different on a highway=path / highway=footway than on all other highway-types, seems not like something anyone would expect
This was also my first idea, but I think to have different meanings for different highway types would be much more confusing than oneway is strictly for vehicle traffic only.
If one have to prefer foot:backward=no oneway:foot I think is at least worthy of discussion.
Does anyone know of discussions that led to the wiki entry or was that an individual opinion?
IMHO it would be extremely ugly to have “oneway” apply to pedestrians, as it is totally associated with oneway traffic control which is always referring only to vehicular traffic. Traffic law typically doesn’t have measures to restrict the direction of pedestrian traffic
I.e. I would expect bare oneway=* tag to only affect vehicles. Especially if it has other tags (e.g. highway=path + bicycle=designated + foot=designated + segregated=yes + oneway=yes would mean to me that only bicycle traffic is oneway, and pedestrians can walk in both ways).
Apparently, some hiking paths are oneways due to their width. The wiki also has an example:
Mandatory oneway direction for pedestrians as a social distancing measure. A prohibitory sign was placed at one end, while at the other end of the path no prohibitory sign was placed.
and some hiking trails like Orla Perć - Wikipedia where oneway traffic was introduced due to repeated deadly accidents (over 140 known deaths since being established 112 years ago)
Let me summarise:
Oneway=* only applies to vehicular traffic.
Therefore oneway:foot should be avoided.
Oneway regulations for pedestrians are recorded as
foot:forward=no or foot:backward=no.
