Thanks! But the first two cases as I understood them have nothing to do with footway=sidewalk
(indeed, whole point of using them is that highway=footway
is not mapped as separate way at all, so of course there would be no footway=sidewalk
on that nonexistent highway=footway
either).
And third case is just strange suggestion (with ton of problems), and didn’t get any traction as far as I can see.
On the other hand, if the suggestion is that
sidewalk=lane
is completely unrelated to mapping separatefootway=sidewalk
ways
That is how I understood it, yes. In fact, it looked so obvious, that it didn’t even occur to me that someone might understand it differently. I’ve now tried to clarify that more explicitly in the wiki - thanks for notifying about not-perfectly-clear situation! Let me know if it is clear now.
then we would need to contend with edge cases such as a pedestrian lane beside a sidewalk, also called a sidewalk extension. Would
sidewalk:right=*
require two values, eitherlane;yes
orlane;separate
, depending on mapping style?
- if regular kerb-sidewalk was already mapped as separate
highway=footway
way, I wouldn’t do anything more - if there was no separate way, but just
highway=residential
, I’d tag it withsidewalk=yes
The reasoning is that I map for usefulness. So such “sidewalk extensions” don’t really matter to me.
As an example of my reasoning, if I’m a cyclist (to stick with known terminology/tagging), and there is trunk road with:
- bicycle sharrows, a gravel verge, and a separate asphalt cycleway track I’d just tag that existing
highway=trunk
only withcycleway:right=track
+cycleway:right:surface=asphalt
(or alternatively draw that cycleway as separate way if I wanted to add more attributes like smoothness,lit,segregated etc. on it). As that is the best option for cyclist, I as cyclist (nor routers) wouldn’t care much about less-useful options that may be available. - bicycle sharrows and a gravel verge, but nothing more I’d just tag that
highway=primary
withcycleway:right=shared_lane
. As that is the best option for cyclist here. - just a gravel verge, but nothing more I’d tag
verge=right
+verge:surface=gravel
+verge:width=2
. Because that is the best option for cyclist here: however bad it might be, it’s better than being suicidal, and will do until better ways are reached.
The same reasoning I would apply to surfaces available for pedestrians (however we may decide to call them) - I’d map the best available one (probably via simple StreetComplete click) and call it a day. If there was a regular sidewalk with kerb and such pedestrian lane extension, only the better kerb-sidewalk would be mapped by me.
I wouldn’t waste time describing other options in a Note (even with a picture), or opening Vespucci for doing a full-fledged edit of all possible options (which would not only waste more time, but the resulting tagging would be more likely to confuse routers and other data consumers than actually help)
I wouldn’t be so sure. In software, the easiest option will often get used, even if it is not the best one. Anecdotal evidence: I use similar approach all the time in my overpass queries (such behaviour is even promoted by overpass itself, because, contrary to how most other data-processing things like SQL/pipes/etc work, in overpass adding additional restrictions in order to reduce dataset actually make the query much slower, instead of faster – I kid you not! It’s even documented somewhere, but I can’t find it right now)
Well, in this thread, I hope only to document how it is currently used (and even that is at a limit of my capacity). If someone decides to make an effort and use that summary as a stepping stone towards a proposal for better way (be it creating a new scheme, or modifying existing one), it would be great! I’d certainly try to participate in that discussion, but I equally certainly wouldn’t be the one volunteering to do the brunt of the work there (truth be told, had I expected this one to turn out so popular, I probably wouldn’t have mentioned it - but now the duty bounds me to finish what I have started )