I'm a user of City Strides, which tracks which streets / roads you've run. There is a list of tags and road types that can be found here, which determine whether a road will be included as runnable. There is an issue with certain roads with high speeds and no walkable grass or footpath along some or most of its length. Unfortunately 'sidewalk=no' is not an option as many runnable roads either don't have footpaths or they aren't mapped. I've also read that 'foot=no' is not appropriate unless signposted. Is there a valid alternative that could be applied to?
1 Like
I donāt understand the question. sidewalk= should be assessed when it hasnāt been determined yet. If it isnāt added, you canāt do anything with it.
Grass, dirt, or unpaved strips on the sides belonging to the roadis verge=
Although there is maxspeed= , actual vehicle speed and traffic volume isnāt part of OSM. That will need external data, or other methods to guess. For comfort, you could measure the exact width= of the roadway (wider roads might increase driving speed on the contrary, and narrower roads slower), which can be done by drawing a placeholder line (remember to delete it) and reading the measurement panel (enabled in āmap dataā on the right, 2nd button from the top on the right). Then thereās shoulder= as mentioned below, and parking:*= in more urban areas.
I also use CityStrides. I simply ignore roads that I donāt want to walk on because they are dangerous or unpleasant. But I understand that some people want to run/walk everything that CityStrides deems runnable.
The only thing that comes to mind would be to exclude roads with no sidewalks (or unknown sidewalks) AND with max speed above a certain level. But that would likely go too far in the other direction, as peopleās perceptions of safety differ. And some high speed roads would have enough space around them to run safely, but that is hard to identify from tagging. There is some tagging of verge and shoulder that could help with that, but relatively little used globally I think.
2 Likes
What about requesting so to skip roads with sidewalk=no and high maxspeed value and lanes=2 and more?
(lanes check to avoid skipping tiny rural roads allowing high speed)
Obviously, this detailed attributes would need to be mapped
1 Like
That was my thinking. Itās very difficult to implement nuanced rules since the safety of roads can vary so much with road type. Itās almost like they werenāt designed with runner in mind 
(also, yeah Iām a completionist so I want to find a solution to this)
That combination sounds reasonable, but I think thereās probably too many cases for a nuanced approach like that. Iāll request something to the community. Do you happen to know if custom tags for specific use cases like this are a feature of OSM?
Thatās correct but you may use foot=discouraged. But as beeing a subjective tag this is disputed.
1 Like
This is also absolutely inappropriate for unsigned subjective feelings.
4 Likes
In general tagging subjective preferences is not supposed to happen.
I worked encourage to at least start from trying to use maxspeed etc info
2 Likes
In full disclosure, I operate StreetFerret, which also generates city-level street completion maps and statistics for runners (in addition to a few other things, like bike ride tracking, mountain peaks visited, and long-distance journey tracking).
So, Iām very familiar with this problem. Each site that does this type of completion tracking has to come up with their own definition for which roads/paths to include in the game.
The first problem is that āunsafeā often comes down to individual user discretion. There are plenty of roads out there that one could argue are āunsafeā by some definition but yet they are legal to walk/run on and people do it.
In general, I include primary and lower classes unless thereās access tagging that indicates pedestrians arenāt permitted. I also check for the presence of sidewalk tagging. Users can run down a sidewalk and it will still āpick upā the adjacent road. So a road thatās tagged with no pedestrian access but with sidewalks present will still show up.
I do a similar heuristic for trunk. Essentially, I include trunk roads by exception ā I include them if there isnāt access tagging prohibiting it and if thereās something that the user can run on ā a sidewalk, shoulder or even verge is acceptable here. And, if the trunk road is an expressway, thatās also an automatic no.
Unfortunately, maxspeed is not really a viable option, as there are many places with very high speed roads that are perfectly accessible to pedestrians in the shoulders. This is quite common in the western United States.
You might want to post some specific examples of the streets in question so we can offer some tagging that might help. I also hang out in a Slack channel where my users sometimes bring up cases like this.
4 Likes
I would consider factors of lanes count, surface, sidewalk, verge, maxspeed, lit, cycleway, busway and obviously access to produce an assessment of safety.
However, if those arenāt defined it just becomes a case of guesswork/estimation.
I have local dual carriageway tagged by another as expressway=yes, which is legal to walk on, yet ill advised and a personal safety judgement assessment.
3 Likes