Pedestrian area

I found this incomplete “street” in CS, Stora kajen - CityStrides . But this is really the quay on a small island, where there are no cars or roads for cars. So I checked OSM, and it’s marked “Pedestrian Area”. As Foot paths are not imported into CS, it seems wrong that Pedestrian areas are included?

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Did you mean “not included?”

I can’t find the page were the CS philosophy is explained, but CS started with the idea of running every street (in one’s city). I have seen other posts saying, “Why not hiking paths?” Or even a CityRides (complete streets on bike) site.

So I suspect it goes back to that initial concept, run every street (that the public is allowed to drive, and foot traffic is not specifically prohibited).

I’m sure others, who have been around longer, will weigh in one this.

Happy striding, Eric

No, I meant what I wrote… It’ s marked as Pedestrian area in OSM. It’s imported as a street into CS, and I think that’s wrong, It’s not a street. As far as I understand a street in CS is a street where you can drive a car, and this is not the case. So maybe James need to correct the algoritm to not include Pedestrian areas

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@hans1, Thank you for the clarification!

I disagree with the definition of a “street” being “a street where you can drive a car”.

I think any formally named street should be included and that’s pretty much how it is today. So, if a street in a city centre is closed off to traffic (pedestrianised) to make it nicer, it still remains a named street and is still runnable - so I think should be included.

Another example is historic drove roads (often 1000s years old) in the UK which are often named and not always driveable, eg Shaftesbury Drove - these are named and runnable, but not (always) driveable.

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Just curious what you think should be done about Broadway in New York City. It’s Manhattan’s longest street, but has recently (the last decade or two) had a few sections made pedestrian only. Should those sections be excluded from City Strides?

As far as I can tell, such sections are excluded (no nodes). At least I’ve come across a few streets that have a gap in nodes in pedestrian sections. My personal take is that stuff like pedestrianised city centers should be included, since they are often the most recognisable parts, and the city wouldn’t feel “done” if they were excluded. In practice usage of OSM tags seems to vary quite a bit across countries, making it hard to define something that satisfies all needs (see the recent discussion on Trunk roads).

@tzruns You make a very good point. I guess (?) it goes back to the initial philosophy of CityStrides (to run every street that a car can go, that pedestrians are also allowed). I have seen suggestions for a CityRides and even for the inclusion of hiking trails.

I guess some initial restraints had to be in place for the OSM queries.

“Run your city, street by street” doesn’t mention cars or pedestrians at all :slight_smile:

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In the end it’s the lifemap that counts, maybe the 100% count should not be leading, but is a help for ticking of on the lifemap. for instance, I also run all the unmaintained trackroads around my projects. some have a name, some not. so better run them all and have a great lifemap coverage. (just my 2c) :slightly_smiling_face:

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@petje - yes, I agree. For me it’s all about colouring in as much of the map as possible, whaever the lines are classified as :slight_smile:

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Normally I agree… my problem here is that this is a small outlying island that belongs to my city. It’s uninhabited during winter, but is a popular excursion place in summer. There is a footpath around the island, about 600 m long, which is of course not included in CS. And then this boat quay, about 50 meters, which is a Pedestrian Area in OSM, And for some reason imported into CS. Well, I guess I’ll just wait for summer when the boats start running again, and run the short loop out there :grin:

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I think these Pedestrian areas should not be included in the OSM query. I have noticed some are in my city that are basically just a large paved area with some benches.

https://citystrides.com/streets/1789641

This is not a street where cars can go, not a path for people to walk on, more like a gathering place. To “complete” it all the nodes must be reached. In OSM to mark an area the nodes are on corners and edges, therefore to get all the nodes you must run around to all the corners (like running every edge of a parking lot).

To fix this for pedestrian areas the query could include [‘highway’ !~ ‘pedestrian’] just as there is already [‘highway’ !~ ‘footway’], or better yet maybe [‘area’ !~ ‘yes’] to avoid all 2 dimensional “ways” in OSM.

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Still a bit confused about Pedestrian areas. In Stockholm we have this one

and it’s included in CS import

But then this one

is also a pedestrian area, which is not in CS. For some reason it’s a relation, not a way, but when I enter edit mode they both appear as Pedestrian areas, the only difference I see is that the second one has type multipolygon, the first one has no type.
So is it OK that the first one is in CS, but not the second? Is one incorrectly set up in OSM?
IRL they look the same, a square where you walk, and maybe drive a car partly at certain hours

I totally missed this entire thread :sweat_smile:

  • It seems wrong to me, as well, that these pedestrian areas are included in CityStrides.
  • I don’t see any issue with including streets that disallow cars (I think we should have more of those, at least here in the US).

I think the issue with Stora kajen and other pedestrian areas are that they’re areas and not ways (well :roll_eyes: they’re Way records in OSM but they cover an area of land as opposed to a line).

I don’t have time to quote-reply each piece of the thread, as I’d prefer to do. :frowning: I quickly read through the thread and saw some discussion of cars / streets that cars drive on which allow pedestrian access / what should be included in CityStrides / sections of streets missing.
I don’t care about cars at all within the context of CityStrides (well, outside of the fact that some areas are too dangerous to run/walk because of them).

I’ll need to look into how these pedestrian areas are tagged in OSM, so I can update the street query to ignore them.

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These two statements seem to contradict each other. If a “street” disallows cars, doesn’t that make it a “pedestrian area”, i.e. an area for pedestrians to be pedestrians? Or is there another type of “way” (OSM speak) that I’m unaware of?

No, the “pedestrian areas” are totally different: Way: ‪Järntorget‬ (‪27345570‬) | OpenStreetMap

They’re spaces/areas as opposed to lines… is the best I can describe it.

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Ah, got it. Thank you!

Hi James - just wondering if this ever happened? There’s a weird bit of “pedestrian area” named in my city that is in fact walkways through a sports stadium!

I found one in Seattle: OpenStreetMap

Digging deeper, it seems that OSM recommends creating a “pedestrian plaza” by making a closed way and tagging it with highway=pedestrian and area=yes. See: Tag:highway=pedestrian - OpenStreetMap Wiki

In my case, it might not be appropriate to name this area, but there are plenty of plazas with names. IMHO, plazas aren’t streets and should be filtered out. But I don’t know if anything else desirable would get filtered out too.