Linking pavements and roads when there is no formal crossing

General talk Tagging general discussion
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Is there a correct way to link pavements and roads when there is no formal crossing? Take for example St Anne’s Court in Soho, London, which runs between two roads with pavement but at either end there is no formal crossing, as there are no road markings or lowered kerb.

I noticed that if the footway only connects with the pavement, the routing will respect that and make you walk all the way down the pavement until you reach a crossing. However, crossing informally is an option, though may be not a viable one for wheelchairs due to the raised kerb.

I recently stumbled across the tag footway=link - is that an option? Should this be used in combination with crossing=informal? Or is linking pavements and roads not recommended when there isn’t a way suitable for wheelchair users?

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I am not familiar with this area but as general advice, I would add a link to the road and even to the pavement on the opposite side in this case and at each intersection if crossing is possible. If it is not footway=crossing, footway=link is the proper tag for these connections. The kerb can be added with a node on the way using barrier=kerb plus additional tags, see Key:kerb - OpenStreetMap Wiki.

Looking at the area, I think many links are missing, so far.

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You can map also kerbs

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Is following applying (both at once)?

  • you can cross here
  • this place is a typical location to cross or one of places to cross rather than nearest crossing marked at map

If yes, then I would map it as unmarked crossing. This is often needed when you have footways as separate ways.

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Unless there is a lowered kerb, I’d argue it’s not appropriate to tag them as an unmarked crossing. To directly quote the crossing=informal page on the wiki:

The difference to crossing=informal is that part of the community understands that the tag crossing=unmarked should be used for places that are designated in one way or another as a crossing, at the very least through a lowered kerb.

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Yes, and crossing=informal was invented specifically to address this, it’s for points where the kerb isn’t lowered.

The picture on the Wiki doesn’t do a good job of communicating this, this is a better example:

20240717_134508
20240717_1345081920×1440 540 KB

There’s a footpath on each side but no dropped kerb.

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Thank you for the clarification @osmuser63783 :pray:t2: How do I use this crossing=informal in the case of this way - Way: 1325257247 | OpenStreetMap? Do I simply add the tag, in addition to highway=footway and footway=link? The wiki doesn’t provide any examples of tagging ways