Primary/Trunk Roads - No Footpath/Sidewalk

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I’ve previously edited a Primary Road in Southampton to have foot=no.

Some little gem has been reverting the changes so it’s back to runnable on CityStrides :frowning:

I see a couple of topics mentioning issues with trunk/primary roads and think the solution could be that if the street type is Primary or Trunk then we should look to see if there is a sidewalk rather than using the foot permission.

In the UK it’s only illegal to walk on a motorway so technically foot=no on a trunk/primary road is incorrect. however if sidewalk=no only an intoxicated and/or certifiably insane person would consider it so it would be a more accurate solution :smiley:

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Some thoughts

  1. I agree with the person reverting your changes. It is allowed, so some people will consider it an option, e.g., if you’re in the countryside maybe you have no other option and figure it isn’t busy enough to be dangerous. I know I have done this in quite a few countries. I wouldn’t do this on motorways.
  2. I don’t think sidewalks are mapped consistently enough for your suggestion to work. You will remove more streets than desired if you only import primaries where a sidewalk is mapped nearby. The OSM quality in the likes of the UK or Belgium (my country) is quite a bit higher than many countries and even there I wouldn’t expect every sidewalk to be mapped.
  3. I think answering the “is there a sidewalk nearby” question is not easy (in terms of processing power). It is definitely a lot more processing than checking whether there is a foot=no. Some people tag sidewalk on the road itself, but most (I think) map them explicitly instead.
  4. That processing would also have to happen on the CS side. As far as I can tell, James gets his data through overpass queries. Overpass will handle filtering on foot=no for you. “Is a sidewalk nearby” I’m not sure
  5. The sidewalk likely does not have a name, so the OSM data for it is not even being imported at all at the moment.

So to summarise: I don’t think it is an easy change to make for James and OSM data might not be good enough to make it worth it to begin with.

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Great answer, most of that makes complete sense now that I’m seeing the technical implications :slight_smile:

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Sorry for jumping on an old thread, but I’ve run across a similar issue in Oregon. I made changes to a few roads that don’t legally prohibit foot traffic, but there is no sidewalk, no bike lane, and barely any shoulder on the road. These things, paired with the roads being quite busy, lead to a situation where it is very unsafe to attempt to run the road. However, as foot=yes, the road will show up as needing to be ran in CS.

I don’t know that there is an answer, but I wanted to point it out again. Thanks!