Streetcomplete: Sidewalk available

[TobiasMie]

An idea for a new quest is the ability to say what is around the street e.g. sidewalk or parking_aisle.
A problem is the direction of the way. Maybe it could be solved by displaying an arrow.

[westnordost]

Would you please elaborate?

[TobiasMie]

A good information for pedestrians is to know if a sidewalk is available. It is declared with sidewalk="left|both|right". The problem is that the user don't know in which direction the way (street) is drawn. Maybe it is possible to display an arrow to make sure in which direction is "left" or "right".

[westnordost]

Ok I see.

[matkoniecz]

Note that equally valid method of tagging sidewalks (used especially in highly mapped places) is mapping sidewalks as separate way. See http://www.openstreetmap.org/#map=18/50.07528/20.03002 for an example.

And it is causing issues already described for cycleways - see https://github.com/westnordost/StreetComplete/issues/139

[CloCkWeRX]

I am a bit opposed to this quest, as the mapping style isnt settled (seperate way or attribute). Its annoying we dont have a best way to do this

[matkoniecz]

Note that there is also sidewalk=separate tag that some use to mark roads where sidewalks are mapped separately.

[westnordost]

But it is not used consistently, so it is useless. But worry not, I have a solution. Did you check out the cycleways branch yet? The branch is basically ready to merge.

This quest can easily be created using the same technique(s) as used for the cycleway quest.

[matkoniecz]

Did you check out the cycleways branch yet?

Looks interesting. I would recommend excluding also roads with bicycle=no in https://github.com/westnordost/StreetComplete/compare/cycleways?expand=1#diff-d36221f1f799ee2ad743fbe2bc979067R142

But it is not used consistently, so it is useless.

I thought about "mapped separately" as an answer, not only to exclude in overpass query.

[westnordost]

excluding also roads with bicycle=no

Why?

[matkoniecz]

Highway tagged as bicycle=no and with cycleway tag generally makes no sense (in theory, there may be a cycling infrastructure with forbidden use - but it is an extreme usecase).

So not asking whatever highway with bicycle=no has cycleway would reduce quest spam.

[westnordost]

That would mean that i.e.

highway=primary
bicycle=no
cycleway=track

would be an error. I am not so sure about this, it could be tagged that way by people who mean to say "you _must_ use the track as a cyclist". I wouldn't tag it that way, but this is not my point.

[matkoniecz]

would be an error

I would interpret it as "there is a separate cycleway but cyclists are anyway unable to use it" (so it would be likely a tagging error - this situation happens extremely rarely).

But maybe mappers, routers and other data consumers interpret it differently?

[matkoniecz]

The same here - does it make sense to ask about sidewalks on road tagged foot=no?

[ftrebien]

@CloCkWeRX On sidewalks, I think it is reasonable to suggest that they could be mapped as tags whenever possible and as lines whenever necessary. Complex sidewalks that would be difficult to map as tags tend to occur only in dense city cores. On cycleways, the wiki recommends mapping cycle lanes as tags and cycle tracks as separate lines. In the case of mapping a cycle track separately, the wiki says that the cycleway tag should not be added, though maybe cycleway=separate would be more reasonable, following the example of sidewalk=separate.

[RubenKelevra]

I would love to be able to tag sidewalks with SC :)

[Mannshoch]

Yes, It's a bit strange that you could tag cycleways but not sidewalks.

[rugk]

Should not this issue be closed? (as it has been included with v10 of SC?)

[westnordost]

right