What is the current consensus on how to map sidewalks when they are only separated from the street by a curb?
Last I heard more than one year ago was the two main systems.
- tags at the street unless clearly separated.
on highway=*, sidewalk=both + sidewalk:surface= etc.
- separate ways following centerline of the sidewalks with individual tags. in almost any case.
highway=footway or similar + surface= etc.
Both systems sort of existed and were used by different peoples, some country communities preferred one or the other and converting one to the other was discouraged for the time being. Have there been any developments since Covid?
I prefer to map them separately. For paths going along the road I use
highway=footway+footway=sidewalk, for separate paths justhighway=footway. You can also addsidewalk=separateto the road, so that routing software knows to prefer the separately mapped sidewalk to just using the road.You can also specify if the sidewalk is on the left or on the right using
sidewalk:left/right.