If I’m planning a walk for myself or leading a group in a rural area such as 
the Peak District I would always assume for an A or B road sidewalk=none as the 
default.   Because of a lack of detail on most maps for sidewalks and verges 
most people out walking in rural areas are likely to plan routes avoiding such 
roads.  I must admit I don’t know what the legal status is when it comes to 
walking along a verge.  If enough people walk along a verge could/should it 
become sidewalk=*, surface=grass/ground/mud/...?  If there was a particular 
need to use a section of an A or B road I would currently have to go out and 
survey it or take a look at any suitable images online.

As a consequence of the above and my involvement in OSM I do now try and put in 
sidewalks as there is the potential to produce a much better map for walkers in 
rural areas using OSM.  Sidewalks are certainly a feature I would like to add 
to the maps I put on my Garmin GPS.  I’m not aware of any online map that 
displays sidewalks.  It would certainly be useful if there was one.

I suspect routing for walking may need to be different when it comes to rural 
and urban areas.  The latter tends to be about getting from A to B.  In rural 
areas routing is most likely to be about a limited distance starting and 
finishing at A and taking in specific features.

I would certainly encourage people to map sidewalks in rural areas as there 
seem to be no rules as to where they are likely to be found and they are a very 
useful map feature for walkers.


Dudley

________________________________
From: Philip Barnes <p...@trigpoint.me.uk>
Sent: 08 March 2017 12:49
To: talk-gb@openstreetmap.org
Subject: Re: [Talk-GB] Legally permitted vs inadvisable

On Wed, 2017-03-08 at 11:41 +0000, SK53 wrote:
Inadvisable is probably too dependent on the individual and their particular 
situation.
Absolutely, doing this could make many PROW inaccessible.

Phil (trigpoint)




As ever it is better to try adding something more objective to the data which 
allows these routing situations to be better handled. The current tags which 
allow this are sidewalk & verge. I think a sensible solution for your generic 
case would be to disallow pedestrian routing along A-roads which have 
sidewalk=none (perhaps when maxspeed > 30 mph). Verges will not be practicable 
for many pedestrians (Mums with pushchairs, toddlers, older people etc) so I 
think can be ignored.

This would still allow routing where no-one has surveyed or tagged sidewalk 
provision, and is therefore less likely to break places where there are 
pavements or paths. It also allows those cases where walking along the road is 
inadvisable to be mapped on a case-by-case basis.

Other refinements might include considering whether a road is urban or rural 
(Richard Fairhurst does this on cycle.travel<http://cycle.travel>): OS Open 
Data provides a decent data set of this & the one I generate from OSM is very 
similar.
cycle.travel | Commuting, Bike Maps, Cycle Routes, Touring<http://cycle.travel/>
cycle.travel
Smart Turns – new on cycle.travel's route-planner. New Saturday 23 April · 6. 
Today cycle.travel’s route-planner gets the biggest single improvement since it 
...



On a broader community level: mapping presence of absence of pavements or other 
paths alongside main roads in the countryside (and when absent features of the 
verge) is probably something we should aim to do alongside completing speed 
limits for trunk roads. Much can be done from Mapillary images.

Jerry



On 8 March 2017 at 11:27, Stuart Reynolds 
<stu...@travelinesoutheast.org.uk<mailto:stu...@travelinesoutheast.org.uk>> 
wrote:
What’s the thinking about tagging foot=no along busy dual carriageways? 
Specifically I would like to remove a walk from a stretch of the A2 near Barham 
in Kent where there are bus stops, but no footways along the verge (and indeed 
very little in the way of verge at some points). It is technically legal to 
walk along the A2 from the junction to the south, but it is most certainly not 
advisable and you would be taking your life into your hands if you did so.

BTW, access to the northbound bus stop is via a footpath through the woods. 
Technically the southbound one is accessed via a footpath across a break in the 
crash barriers - but we don’t have that on OSM, and I’m not about to add it in.

http://www.openstreetmap.org/node/26237116#map=18/51.21188/1.16626

Regards,
Stuart Reynolds
for traveline south east & anglia




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