In my quest to map out the sidewalk networks of my region, I’ve come across the unfortunately common American practice of having strips of sidewalks totally unconnected to the rest of the network, like the one shown in the picture:
If I map the sidewalk without any connections to the rest of the road network, the QA tools get grumpy at me. There’s not really an obvious place to put a crossing either. How would you guys go about mapping that, if you map it at all?
I don’t know if it would be correct or not, (I’m a new kid on the block)! How about adding a driveway or 2 and connecting the sidewalk as it appears in that location? see my snapshot. I welcome any response to the contrary.
Usually the “driveway” tag is meant for long driveways like those on a farm if I remeber the wiki page correctly, but that’s honestly not a terrible idea there. I might do that!
If I was kid on my bike I’d probably take the first driveway ride the sidewalk & exit back to the road on the next driveway! 
(As a responsible adult I’d probably just stay on the street). ;-)
It is fine to use it for any length of driveway. Not the worst solution for sure.
Another pattern is to attach the stranded ends of the sidewalk to the roadway with highway=footway, footway=link to indicate to routers etc that “yep, time to just jump into the road”.
That might’ve been common practice 10 or 15 years ago, but these days the vast majority of highway=service service=driveway ways are minor driveways.[1]
Of Amazon Prime customers more or less. 
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I would add that if sidewalk/road ends with no connection at all you can put noexit=yes on ending note.
Part of benefit is that well written validator will take it into account.
(but it does not apply here: just map driveways)
if wiki page claims it - can you link it so it can be fixed?
I will second that both highway=service+service=driveways and highway=footway+footway=links are valid ways to connect these stranded sidewalks to adjacent roadways.
In cases like these, where there is a driveway to connect to, I would strongly favor that approach.
@DLZ2024, small note - the bold, yellow ways in the image below would be better tagged highway=footway+footway=residential, not highway=footway+footway=sidewalk.
Taking a second look, now I can’t find anything about that. It’s entirely possible I T3’d that whole memory
If you did, then so did I. Maybe it is the example pictures that did it?
for personal driveways, make sure to mark them private for vehicles.
That depends on the area. In some regions mappers are using access=private to distinguish driveways that are posted with no trespassing signs or the like, whereas the usually untagged default would be more like destination. It’s an important distinction that for example delivery drivers or people going door to door need to know about, potentially for their personal safety.
I would advise you to read the WiKi page on Access:=Private
I map such always as highway=footway and footway=link
This works for the routers and is a clear indication to local government units how “screwed up” their infrastructure is - room for improvement becomes now very obvious
