|Sidewalk tags for footways|
|Used on these elements|
|Documented values: 3|
|Tools for this tag|
Use it together with highway=footway to map sidewalks alongside or crossing a street. In particular, this tag (combined with name=*) allows to differentiate between highway=footway as sidewalk associated with a parallel carriageway (to constitute the street) and highway=footway that incidentally are parallel to a street. It is also used with highway=path where it represents sidewalk (for example for sidewalk that is combined footway and cycleway). It may also appear on sidewalks under construction (for example highway=construction + construction=footway).
It is recommended to map the sidewalk as property on the street if the sidewalk is just attached with a kerb and not separated by a road verge or other barriers. See Sidewalks for more details and a comparison of the two tagging approaches. See also the comprehensive explanation for bicycle way tagging.
|footway||access_aisle||Marked footpath in a parking lot, typically between two parking spaces, to facilitate access to parked vehicles|
|footway||crossing||A pedestrian crossing, usually connecting two sidewalks|
|footway||sidewalk||A sidewalk alongside a street, separately mapped with highway=footway|
Please use sidewalk=* instead to tag a sidewalk as additional information to a street.
Usage for sidewalks
To start using this tag, map the sidewalk as a way alongside the carriageway, with the following tags:
You might use additional tags:
Connections of other ways with to the street should always be made as in reality: If a way terminates on the sidewalk don't map a connection to the carriageway. If a way goes over the sidewalk to the carriageway just draw the way trough to the carriageway with a shared node on the sidewalk way.
The latter also holds true for connecting highway=footway/path: The access permissions for sidewalks usually don't allow other access than pedestrian and without the connection routing might be broken. If a way allowed for bicycles terminates on a sidewalk consider adding bicycle=dismount for the shortest sidewalk route to the carriageway.
If walking is illegal on a road then use foot=no, given that most roads are assumed to be available for use by pedestrians unless they are motorways. For motorways consider adding foot=yes if walking it allowed, or add a sidewalk=* tag which should also be interpreted as meaning that walking is allowed. See access=* for a more general discussion about legal access issues.
Usage for crossings
The process is as follows:
- Create a perpendicular footway=sidewalk way connecting the sidewalks on either side of the street.
- Tag the perpendicular way with highway=footway and footway=crossing
- Place a highway=crossing node at each point where this perpendicular section crosses the carriageway (often only one point, more for a dual carriageway or complex junction).
You might use additional tags:
Notes: Where there's no sidewalk on the opposite side but where the crossing is used to access a park, playground, building entrance, service road. etc., draw the perpendicular footway from the sidewalk footway to the crossing node on the carriageway.
Add cycleway=crossing if the crossing can be used by cyclists without dismounting, however where cyclists are required to dismount then add bicycle=dismount) to indicate that the route can be used by cyclists on foot.
The following examples show the range of sidewalk/crossing mapping of an intersection from very detailed to less detailed.
|Example for tagging as separate way|
|Example for combination of tagging as property and as separate way - full crossing & kerb mapping|
|Example for combination of tagging as property and as separate way - light crossing & kerb mapping|
|Example for tagging as property|
Use of a relation (optional)
To couple the sidewalk to its respective street, the ways can be added to a relation of type associatedStreet. The proposed type street is another commonly-used street aggregation relation. The following roles work in either.
(Traditionally, both relation types are used for a very different purpose - for linking houses to the street whose name is used in their address, rather than the street they are physically accessible from -, which accounts for most of the existing uses.)
|street or <empty>||One or more||The multiple ways that form the carriageway|
|sidewalk||One or more||The multiple ways that form the sidewalk and the crossings|
Using relations for this purpose is very much optional, and you may wish to omit this in order to keep your mapping simple.
- 2016-08 around 4000 elements with role sidewalk
- sidewalk=* for mapping sidewalks as refinement to a highway
- Proposed features/Sidewalk as separate way - approved proposal for this key