Overpass Street Query

Hi All, new to the message boards here, but I think this question is most relevant to the thread here. Is there a recommended way to handle a single “street” that is a mix of inaccessible expressway sections and other easy to run segments?

The Mystic Valley Parkway in Medford, MA has quite a few nodes along different stretches, but the segments in the screenshot are not accessible safely. Inaccessible sections all appear to be marked as highway-trunk OSM Link or highway-trunk_link OSM Link 2.

From my reading of the google doc, these should be ignored in CS. Is there a way to push an update and get them removed? Or best to just mark manually complete?

Any advice is much appreciated!

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Those segments should be marked as foot=no in openstreetmap.

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Thanks, Brian. That was quite an easy fix. Appreciate your help here.

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Although we have [‘foot’ !~ ‘no’], please could you add [‘foot’ !~ ‘private’] and [‘foot’ !~ ‘customers’] to match the equivalents in the query for access=? Having people add an overly permissive access= tag to a highway=pedestrian way could be unhelpful for routing software.

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There is Google doc of what parameters denote a street to import or to exclude? I have been looking for something to reference, is the link to that doc available to share?

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I’m confused about the exact tagging…
When I view Key:foot - OpenStreetMap Wiki it points me to Key:access - OpenStreetMap Wiki as the list of all possible values.
So I don’t know if I’m filtering on the foot=customers tag or the access=customers tag. Similarly, the foot=private / access=private distinction is confusing.

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I was informed by a an OSM moderator of Vermont that when I changed a bunch of “Private” roads to access=private, that removes the road from routing engines. I validated the claim as accurate. We should only label any road as access=private if there is a sign forbidding access/trespassing

I then changed all of these roads back to access=yes but changed from highway=residential to highway=service highway=driveway

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What do people think about whether to include ways with foot=no in combination with sidewalk=separate? I came across this street in my area that was not pulling into CityStrides due to the foot=no tag, but there is clearly a sidewalk alongside the roadway.

I haven’t yet but plan to add a sidewalk=separate (sidewalk:left=no and sidewalk:right=separate to be specific) tag to this way as well. So my question is - is it appropriate to pull street ways with a foot=no and sidewalk=separate tag into CityStrides? In this case, I would say yes, but I am curious about scenarios elsewhere in the world.

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The tag foot=use_sidepath is imported into CS, I have used this a lot of times for streets that had foot=no but had sidewalks

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@hans1 Does using foot= use_sidepath keep the nodes on the street, or is the side path used? I’ve had situations where using the side path puts me more than 20m away from the car lanes, which makes getting the nodes tricky.

For example a bridge comprised of a footpath/light-rail tracks/2x2 lanes of traffic with a divider is too wide to get the nodes on the outside car lane. Would you use use_sidepath on the closer lane, and foot=no on the far lane?

The use_sidepath doesn’t change any nodes for the street, so yes I’ve also had instances where the sidepath (really an adjacent cycle/footway) gets to far from the car lanes. If so I’ve managed to run ”between” the two to get closer to the street.
For your other example, yes, I’ve done for some very wide streets with separated lanes

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Good call - I think that makes sense in this scenario.

@JamesChevalier Would it be possible to exclude access = military as well? There are a number of barracks in my city that have mostly unnamed service roads but also include the odd named street that gets pulled into CS (example: Aachener Straße - CityStrides). I’ve jumped the occasional gate to get nodes, but I draw the line at sneaking past armed guards :sweat_smile:

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Seems reasonable…

When looking into the tag, I found that Key:access - OpenStreetMap Wiki mentions:

There are some roads with restricted access - roads in factory complexes, on military bases or driveways with clear out of bounds signage or barriers. To mark road as as restricted to only private access, add access=private.

To me, access=military implies that it’s private. I don’t know if that’s actually true or not.
It seems like it should be ok to ignore ways tagged that way, but based on the wiki text I’m wondering if those ways need to be re-tagged to access=private.
:man_shrugging:

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4 posts were split to a new topic: Should all the ways for this street be tagged as foot=no?

New one for me has just popped up:

Can we add [‘service’ !~ ‘slipway’] to the list please? :slight_smile:

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That “way” would be a good one for when @JamesChevalier launches CityStrokes! :grin:

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G’day, I’m new to CS but enjoying the challenge and the community so far. I’d like to second this suggestion from @tkajstura since there are many areas in my city that don’t make sense in the context of this game.
For example, the enormous foyer in our local children’s hospital is marked highway=pedestrian and area=yes - not the most appropriate place to be jogging.

FWIW, I actually built my own #everystreet software (in Golang) before discovering CS. Here are the extra Overpass filters my tool uses:

[highway!="corridor"] // indoor corridors, usually in shopping centres
[service!="driveway"] // I don't have the [name] requirement, so this is important
[area!="yes"]         // public squares and plazas, never streets
[surface!="cobblestone"][surface!="sett"]  // protect those ankles!!!

I’d recommend adopting any of these, provided it’s not too disruptive to long time users. :+1:

If public areas are intentionally included then an alternative solution to my hospital scenario above is to use [building!=roof] or even [!building]. No idea how common the pattern [name][highway][building] is overall since AFAIK taginfo doesn’t support multi-tag stats.

Ignoring streets that have surface set to "cobblestone" or "sett" would in my opinion be detrimental to most European users, me included. Many cities in Europe, especially the older ones, have quite a large number of streets that are entirely or partially covered in cobblestones or similar. Ignoring these would result in larger chunks of the city missing.

I am also inclined to think that area="yes" should generally be included. At least, including them makes more sense in my city than ignoring them. For the case of the foyer in your local children’s hospital, it sounds like it should be marked by indoor=yes in OSM. This is also a filter in the CS Overpass query, although I think that the CS Overpass query should probably be changed to ignore the other (positive) values of indoor, not only indoor=yes.

I think that ignoring driveways is already included in the query. Even the ones that have names attached to them.

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