As a European who has moved to the United States 11 years ago, I can attest to the peculiarities of U.S. pedestrian infrastructure from a European perspective. Just a couple of examples:
-
Sidewalks can just end at random without any indication of where you can legally continue on foot:
-
Sidewalks sometimes don’t even pretend to be designed for efficient foot travel:
-
Bicycles are generally permitted on sidewalks, and often there is no safe alternative to ride a bike.
When I moved here I was a strong proponent of mapping sidewalks as attributes on the street. Don’t make things more complicated than they need to be. I quickly changed my mind. Someone already mentioned that mapping sidewalks as attributes creates a need to split ways into tiny segments in some places because the random nature of sidewalk coverage. Access limitations further complicate this: some sidewalks are wide enough (and with high enough quality of paving) to allow for wheelchair access, but very often this is not the case:
