Key:sidewalk

+/- sidewalk Description Is there a sidewalk on this street? The street in the picture is tagged sidewalk=both. Group Properties Element help Used combinations in World Australia/Oceania Europe (list) Asia (list) Central America (list) South America (list) Africa (list)

Description

The sidewalk=* tag can be used to indicate the presence or absence of sidewalks (also footway/pavement etc) beside a highway using the values yes/ both/ none/ left or right. In many countries (including many countries in Europe) where sidewalks are nearly always provided on residential and other urban roads then it is necessary to only tag the exceptions (using sidewalk=none). The presence of a sidewalk implies that there is access for pedestrians, however if this is not the case or if other access restrictions apply then use foot=*. Note that the legal definition of a sidewalk may be different, including a grassy area next to a highway or a walkway not next to any highway; the sidewalk tag is only used for a maintained (usually paved) walkway next to a highway.

Recommended values:

• sidewalk=both both sides of the street have sidewalks (Same as footway=both)
• sidewalk=left/right on which side the sidewalk is (Same as footway=left/right)
• sidewalk=none there is no side walk at all (Same as footway=none)
• sidewalk=yes there is a sidewalk on this street might be on both sides. Try to avoid this! (Same as footway=yes)

For more detailed 'micro-mapping' of pedestrian routes sidewalks can be tagged as separate ways. See footway=sidewalk for more details.

Terminology

Caution over use of terms:

The legal UK term for a 'pavement' or a 'sidewalk' is 'footway'. However... the term footway is used within OSM for any path, be it beside a carriageway or otherwise. The term pavement which is often used in the UK as an alternative to footway is used in the USA for the surface of the carriageway (which incidentally is known as a roadway in the USA!) For this reason it is safer to use the term sidewalk even though British English is the preferred language for the OSM wiki.

MapCSS style

A mapCSS stylesheet is available for josm.

Discussions

• http://help.openstreetmap.org/questions/901/how-to-tag-way-linking-sidewalkfootway-to-road
• Talk:Proposed_features/Sidewalk
• http://help.openstreetmap.org/questions/1236/should-i-map-sidewalks

See also

• Key:footway
• Proposed features/Sidewalk - proposal where this key originated
• Proposed features/Sidewalk as separate way