Added some sidewalks
Posted by cainmark on 10 November 2010 in English. Last updated on 11 November 2010.Added some pedestrian ways and some shops and Crestwood Hospital in Huntsville, Alabama
OpenStreetMap
Added some pedestrian ways and some shops and Crestwood Hospital in Huntsville, Alabama
Discussion
Comment from robert on 13 November 2010 at 01:32
Doing sidewalks like this doesn't tend to turn out very well, and it creates a huge mess. Generally, sidewalks are assumed to be present on most roads.
The major problem with it is it screws with routing. A routing engine sending you down a "sidewalk" footway has no way of knowing that you can actually cross the street (get to the sidewalk footway) at any point along the street, and as a result ends up sending you on some ridiculous roundabout routes.
Comment from cainmark on 13 November 2010 at 16:55
I understand your concern, but I respectfully disagree.
In this city (Huntsville, Alabama), we have very few sidewalks that can get you anywhere, which is why I started to map them. They are definitely not present on most roads. It's difficult, but possible, to walk East to West, but danged near impossible to walk from North to South here.
And you can't really cross the street here at any point. You'll be run over by inattentive motorists on their cell phones texting. I mark the zebra ways where to cross.
I've looked over all the pros and cons in the old forums and saw the contention between several ways of doing things for mapping besides motorists. I saw that, for my city, the pros far outweigh the cons of having pedestrian routes marked on the map. I started out trying to do them as relations, but they never worked right as there is ofeten grass betweent he sidewalks and roadway, which is why I do them as their own single tracks from my GPS traces.
We will have a great sidewalk-then nothing for miles, then another sidewalk. As part of making my city more Bicycle and pedestrian friendly, I am adding the sidewalks and have already added all the bicycle routes. Pedestrians need maps just as much as vehicles do.
As for the routing, I don't know what to do about that, but I do know a visible sidewalk on the OpenStreetMap helps pedestrians a lot.
I apologize if this irritates you, but I feel am being helpful in volunteering my time to map the sidewalks for my city (which was far to motor-centric for too long) to make it more pedestrian friendly for the future.