Pedestrian lane on the road

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I agree, there is some confusion. But it is relatively small (and insignificant for data consumers) compared to for example far more problematic OSM use of highway=footway in a way that is contrary to what Footway actually means in English (i.e. in OSM, footway not only does not need kerb/etc separation, but in fact does not need to have nearby carriageway at all). With sidewalk the confusion is at least only partial :person_shrugging: - it seems to me that if OSM is to be used around the world, and not just in one country, that there will be necessarily always be confusion for English speakers (given tags are in mostly in English). There is even often serious confusion between just different dialects of English; now imagine how it must be in much more culturally diverse parts of the world!

I sometimes wonder if it wouldn’t have been better if OSM decided to use wikidata-alike numeric IDs instead of UK English names for tags / values - it often seems to create way more confusion and flamewars than it helps with “intuitively” understanding the meaning :frowning:

That being said, I do not wish to enforce any particular use. I would just plead that whatever people decide to map those “pedestrian lanes” (or whatever one want to call them) that they make sure that:

  • it is documented (as I’ve tried to document in Sidewalks - OpenStreetMap Wiki for this specific issue)
  • open appropriate tickets so routers (and other data consumers) actually make use of such way of mapping

Choose key from that list in link I’ve sent you, click on Values, and type lane and press Enter.

Ummm, I think you might’ve confused me with someone? I’m the one who opened this thread in order to find out how people map it (and replied to you only to clarify something you asked about). I do not intend to promote any way specific of mapping those. I only intend to invest time to document what people say how they are mapping those things, in order so next poor soul that comes along does can see that in short form and decide for themselves quickly, instead of instigating yet another long-winded discussion without consensus. IOW, I only intend to describe how it is being tagged (so interested data consumers can handle it), and not prescribe how it “must” be used.

That is true that it would bring extra details. As you said, it has not been used yet. If you care about it, I suggest to link into other thread by clicking on port reply arrow and choosing Reply as linked topic, and try to describe how it would be used (or even jump straight into https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Proposal_process).

Thanks, I’ve not seen that suggested so far, I’ve documented it in the wiki too!

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I have no problem with using the :lanes-tagging schema but please be careful with the value of lanes=*. Bicycle anf foot lanes do not count!
Two more points to consider:

  • How about horses? Are they allowed on the right lane? I guess not.
  • oneway does not count for pedestrians

I propose:

highway=residential
lanes=1
oneway=yes
access:lanes=yes|no
foot:lanes=|designated
width:lanes=|1

and probably placement=middle_of_1 if the way is drawn in the middle of the vehicle lane.

EDIT: fixed links

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Thanks! I’ve added a warning to the wiki that while :lanes “extension covers all kinds of lanes for all kind of vehicles and is not restricted to motorized traffic”, lanes=* does not count neither foot nor cycleway lanes.

(also, you links seem to link to wiki.openstreetmap.de instead of wiki.openstreetmap.org, which doesn’t work for me)

They are not defined (not only for the right, but also for the left lane!), so it is unknown. In places where they are an realistic possibility, it should be defined (as might other things like kick_scooter, snowmobile, hand_cart, electric_bicycle which might be region-specific)

It is unclear. See wiki part about “some mappers consider oneway=* valid for all kinds of movement, including foot” and below, as well as Talk:Key:oneway#Pedestrian_oneways

is the first element empty/undefined on purpose? I see it documented for lane maxspeed to be omitted when non-existent, but cycleway lane example (which should be similar to pedestrian lane example for :lanes extension) at Lanes - OpenStreetMap Wiki uses regular no as example for forbidden access

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Thanks for pointing out that lanes=* only refers to the lanes with motorized traffic, that was new to me. Your usage of access:lanes=yes|no + foot:lanes=|designated would imply that pedestrians are allowed to walk on both lanes of the road. I’m not Croatian, so I don’t know if that’s correct or not.

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I am sorry. Thanks for the hint. I have fixed the links.

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I do not know how deeply we want to dive into :lanes-tagging here or if a new topic would be better.
Additionally, I only know the German law well enough to talk about details like horse and which lanes are completely prohibit.

The first sentence is pretty clear in my understanding (only vehicles), https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Key:oneway:

The oneway tag is used to indicate the access restriction on highways and other linear features for vehicles as appropriate.

see also:

Yes, I left the values empty as I do not know the rules in Croatia.
Even in Germany, no for bicycles is disputed as there are too many exceptions like turning left on the next intersection, overtaking, or if the lane is blocked. We have use_sidepath as access value but we miss a use_sidelane or similar for access tags per lane, see:

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Wouldn’t “shoulder” better than “lane” for an at grade pedestrian strip at the edge of the roadway. They could be used together “shoulder:both:lanes=2” in the case of separate bicycle and pedestrian lane on each side of the road surface.

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I’d suggest not - in British English (the dialect that OSM mostly uses) it’s not a shoulder because it’s not wide enough.

Call it verge if you want and add a surface tag, or make up your own term, but picking a word that means something else is likely to confuse.

Personally I’ve always tagged sidewalks separated from the road by paint but not a kerb as sidewalks.

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63

Which brings us back to the main question: is a sidewalk an infrastructure that’s separated from the carriageway, or is a sidewalk just “where pedestrians walk, wherever that is”.
My understanding has always been that in OSM, a sidewalk is a dedicated way for pedestrians and/or bicyclists, physically separated from the carriageway, running along of it. But since I’m not a native speaker, so that might be a misunderstanding. I always thought sidewalk = trottoir = Bürgersteig, just for background.

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That my understanding. It mainly the seperation by some type of barrier.

I wasn’t aware that a shoulder was less than a particular width. Is there a term for an at-grade pedestrian way.

I would suggest one but the US doesn’t have a concept of anything else but shoulders. Other than for emergency use, designated at-grade pedestrians ways don’t really exist. There usually a customary yellow line to marks the outer edge of motorized traffic but I don’t know how much it is enforced.

This because most municipalities either build sidewalks or let pedestrians to walk on the road surface of any residential or low speed street.

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I have always thought the tag included ways dedicated for pedestrians but separated from the road only by markings

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Probably, look at the picture I posted above, where the sidewalk changes from being separated by a kerb to being separated by a road marking, is it instead turning into a shoulder then?

The more I read about the subject, the more I like the tagging mentioned by @Minh_Nguyen - the pedestrian_lane - which is very much American :slight_smile: This even would lend itself for separate ways tagging, much the same as is done with sidewalks. I miss his vote in the proposal there.

I put the pedestrian_lane in the Wiki section, it got moved from top to bottom, while this is the most convenient way for mappers. The lanes: stuff will never work. I bet, there are lots of such lanes mapped either as sidewalk or as nondescript footway.

After all, the distinction, even if here not based in law, is based in construction standards, for good reasons: Ground markings are not seen in winter, e.g.

67

Ummm, both of those resolve to the same meaning to me? “infrastructure that’s separated from the carriageway” does not specify how it must be separated (tree lines, jersey barriers, bollards, kerbs, different surface on the same level e.g. paving_stones vs. asphalt, or just painted lines) - just that there should be clear delineation between carriageway (i.e. lanes dedicated for regular motor vehicle traffic) and other surfaces (where regular motor vehicle traffic is not allowed).

Note that we already have the similar “what is required for delineation” with foot vs. bicycle combined ways - i.e. how we tag segregated=yes cycleway and footway – they might often be segregated/delineated by kerbs, or they might be on same level but just different surface, or there might be only painted line (and some pictograms) for delineation.

Depending on the country, some of those demarcations are more popular then others, of course.

I’ve tried to sort them by their current usage according to taginfo where possible, as that at least is (mostly) objective. Trying to sort them by what is preferred would necessarily bring subjective bias into play (and thus needlessly hurt feelings of everyone who does not share that same preference) so I tried to avoid that as much as possible. As taginfo usage changes with time, feel free to rearrange them.

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Just north of here there’s somewhere you can walk separated from the road by a painted line. I mapped it from survey (originally as “footway”, later changed to “sidewalk”) about 10 years ago. There’s no Mapillary coverage, but you can see it on GSV here.

I am a native British English speaker** and I’d suggest that the description of this would be a “pavement”, but because that means different things in different versions of English OSM tends to use “sidewalk” for that. It’s not really a shoulder - those are common on motorways and some expressways in England, but not on other roads. In Ireland, going back a few decades, shoulders were extremely common (less so now after more motorways have been built). There are still some examples; here is one that I found without much searching.

** but I am only one of many, and as the StreetComplete shoulder debacle showed there are different view here.

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69

Do you also favor mapping them as separate ways? I think that’s really the definition that matters most in an OSM context: a sidewalk is a footpath associated with the street that can be mapped as a separate way without violating the physical separation principle (even if that isn’t the locally preferred style).

I was unaware that kindergartners in Germany are taught random English words such as “sidewalk” and that your local laws are written in English. :wink: To reiterate, if this American English word has been co-opted by German mappers as a euphemism for a more specific German word, and that word’s meaning should be imposed upon the rest of the world, then the documentation should say so.

I’m definitely not insisting that the whole project follow American English, but I think it’s very important that native speakers of other languages be aware of what can be lost in translation. That “sidewalk” happens to be a common translation of Bürgersteig does not necessarily mean the two words have exactly the same meaning. Defining sidewalk as Bürgersteige either requires mappers and data consumers to pay special attention to documentation, or it requires us to accept a little inconsistency from one country to another.

For the record, the sidewalk feature page was started by an American; the sidewalk documentation was started by a Swedish mapper; and the successful proposal for footway=sidewalk ways was written by an Italian mapper based on an earlier proposal written by an American mapper. But generally speaking, you’re correct that we’ve historically benefited from the German community’s insightful proposals and documentation about navigation-related tags. The earliest proposal related to sidewalks was indeed written by a German speaker: it controversially proposed calling them “footways”.

Anyways, to me, the dialectal vocabulary and wiki history are secondary. The most important consideration is whether the tag’s definition is practically useful. If defining footway=sidewalk in terms of function causes this pedestrian lane to require a bunch of tags to undo the essence of what footway=sidewalk was approved for – physical separation – then this is classic troll-tagging. For the pedestrian lane, I favor footway=lane on the roadway (not a separate way), because it follows existing patterns and is unlikely to trip up any data consumer that has been interpreting OSM tags correctly.

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Well hello language barrier :laughing: Infrastructure was meant in a physical way, not in a usage way. I should probably rephrase it in OSM-terms:
A sidewalk, for me, is what makes a footway a track and not a lane. To explain this further, here’s the documentation from the wiki for cycle lanes:

Since we’ve been distinguishing this for bicycles for a long time, I was assuming the same applies to sidewalks.

In other words: If a footway alongside the road is an inherent part of the road, but set aside for the exclusive use of pedestrians, whilst being separated only by paint or other markings, and without a physical separation from vehicles, it’s not a sidewalk.

If we consider every part of a street where pedestrians can walk on, a sidewalk, then I think some things end up with weird definitions. And then “sidewalk” should be changes to “footway”, so that would be more clear (e.g. footway=right to indicate that pedestrians walk on the right side of the road). (No, I don’t want this, I’m just stating the consequences of calling a bit of paint on the road a “sidewalk” in countries where 99% of all sidewalks are separated by a kerb)

That’s exactly what I mean, thanks.

Agreed. A shoulder, for me, is a special lane for the road traffic, not separated by any physical barrier, so the traffic on the road can always pull over, but not drive on the shoulder. Usage varies by country, I suppose, but if the traffic going on the carriageway isn’t allowed to use a shoulder, it’s not a shoulder. It’s built for the traffic going on the road.

I can see how blurry this becomes when you’re trying to put this into a definition that people all over the world can relate to. Initially, in Germany, they were built as an emergency breakdown lane and also as a parking lane outside settlements. If you see a shoulder, you know it’s a shoulder. At least over here :person_shrugging:

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Usage varies by country, I suppose, but if the traffic going on the carriageway isn’t allowed to use a shoulder, it’s not a shoulder. It’s built for the traffic going on the road.

as you spoke about Germany, there the “traffic” may not use the shoulder from my understanding, as you are not allowed to drive outside the carriageway markings.

Regarding the exact meaning of a term in German, I believe these are all the same in Germany (not in Austria as we just learned from Hungerburg), predominant usage depends on the linguistic region: Gehweg, Gehsteig, Trottoir, Trottwar, Bürgersteig and Fußweg (this one is more generic and generally means a footway)

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You are not allowed to drive on it, but you can stop and park. I don’t know of any shoulder where the traffic from the carriageway is not allowed to “use” the shoulder, where usage varies. How I hate typing in a foreign language :laughing: So the shoulder is “built for” the traffic on the carriageway, but signs can open up shoulders for other forms of transport as well. As I said: hard to put in words :confused:

Gehweg and Fußweg are identical and the official terms for a way used by pedestrians, no matter what. Trottoir and Bürgersteig are informal words referring to to a specific form of the former, namely raised and separated by a kerb. The other terms were not used in any region I’ve lived in.

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Sometimes a road is originally built wider than necessary to accommodate projected future traffic. In the meantime, some jurisdictions would mark off the excess space as a shoulder on either side, while others would just make the adjacent travel lanes much wider. I’m familiar with these shoulders allowing informal street parking, being reserved for emergency use only (including broken-down cars, not necessarily emergency vehicles), or effectively functioning as an extra lane at certain times (“shoulder lane”), but there may be some specific locations where the shoulder officially can’t be used for anything (outside a sensitive military installation, perhaps?).

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Understood! I did add the recently mentioned contender footway=lane to the section; at the end. Please sort as appropriate: Quick overpass survey shows it mostly used as an attribute to a highway=footway, this to little surprise. There are indeed some matching the topic here, while some are not.