OpenStreetMap
Should I get rid of foot=yes on roads you shouldn't walk on?
Posted by JesseAKARaccoon on 30 October 2021 in English.In San Francisco, several roads are marked as having sidewalks, which is normal and good. But I notice some (like Van Ness Avenue here) are marked with foot=yes as well. Even though you clearly shouldn’t be walking around in the actual busy street.
This seems pretty wrong? Being marked as having a sidewalk should be enough for routers. As a bonus, the sidewalk is double-mapped, and Van Ness should be marked sidewalk=separate, I think.
I see a lot of this in SF, which is why I’ve been hesitant to fix it. But I can fix this, right?
Discussion
Comment from Lejun on 30 October 2021 at 09:36
You could delete it in my opinion. You may check tags history as well, I guess it must be some kind of tags forgotten after the mapping of sidewalks
Comment from SomeoneElse on 30 October 2021 at 10:34
“foot=yes” means “it is legal to walk there”, regardless of whether it’s actually a good idea, or even life-threatening, or not. It’s a long time since I’ve been in that area so I’ve no idea whether that applies to Van Ness (e.g. here). There are separate sidewalks and crossings mapped - as previously suggested, perhaps those post-date the “sidewalk=right” and “foot=yes” tags on that way?
There’s a fairly active “local-california” channel at https://slack.openstreetmap.us/ where I’m sure that many of the people who have mapped these things are active, so it might be worth asking there; there’s also https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-us (where some people who don’t like proprietary channels such as Slack are to be found)
Comment from oba510 on 31 October 2021 at 11:31
(I am probably the person who originally added the foot=yes tags years ago.)
For a long time Van Ness was tagged as highway=trunk (because it’s US 101), and some routers treat that as foot=no without an explicit access tag. It’s probably not necessary now that it’s been downgraded.
In general the way is supposed to represent the entire street at least on some level. It is of course legal to walk down Van Ness since it’s a public street. It’s even legal (and sometimes necessary) to walk in the roadway in certain situations, so I wouldn’t add a foot=no tag.
I originally added the sidewalk=* tags to Van Ness (and about one third(?) of the streets in SF) several year ago. The separately-drawn sidewalks are fairly new and I’m not sure if the people who mapped them were even aware that the sidewalk=* tags existed, so now there are a ton of double-mapped sidewalks around. I’m not sure what the best way to deal with that is.
Comment from JesseAKARaccoon on 31 October 2021 at 11:38
Well, apparently it is not permitted by California jaywalking laws to walk around in the street if a sidewalk is available (and if you do that on Van Ness, you will definitely cause a wreck), so I’m gonna agree with Lejun that these foot=yes tags are probably old, and wrong, and should be removed.
“Pedestrians should use sidewalks and designated overpassed, tunnels and bridges whenever available in California. The only time it is legal for a pedestrian to walk in the road is if a sidewalk or passageway is not available and if the pedestrian walks on the leftmost edge of the road.” – https://www.damfirm.com/california-jaywalking-law/
But I’ll pop into the chats that SomeoneElse pointed out to avoid stepping on any toes.
Comment from JesseAKARaccoon on 31 October 2021 at 11:44
oba510 – Looks like we commented at nearly the same time!
I wasn’t planning to write out foot=no, but instead just remove the tag entirely – at least where sidewalks are mapped separately, since we don’t want routers directing people to jaywalk in the car lanes. But if you think foot=yes should remain on roads where the sidewalk isn’t mapped separately, I’ll leave it be.
Comment from oba510 on 31 October 2021 at 12:46
To be clear, I am agreeing with you that the foot=yes tags can (and probably should) be removed from Van Ness. I only added it because pedestrian routers were giving screwy results without it, and it doesn’t serve a practical purpose anymore.
There’s some ambiguity in the actual California and SF laws (which are slightly different), but neither actually prohibits pedestrians from walking within the roadway, as long as they stay out of the way of traffic and don’t walk in the bike lane.
Under SF law ( https://codelibrary.amlegal.com/codes/san_francisco/latest/sf_transportation/0-0-0-387 ) people can theoretically cross anywhere as long as they walk in a straight perpendicular line, except in the “Downtown Core”. Under CA law ( https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/codes_displayText.xhtml?lawCode=VEH&division=11.&title=&part=&chapter=5.&article= ) jaywalking is only prohibited between “adjacent intersections controlled by traffic control signal devices or by police officers”. I would assume that would apply to almost all of Van Ness, unless intersections with alleys are legally considered intersections.
Comment from oba510 on 31 October 2021 at 12:55
Gah! Your second message didn’t appear until after I posted…
Personally I think that in most cases it’s better to just leave it untagged, but wouldn’t bother to remove the foot=yes tag unless there are sidewalks mapped separately (that don’t have any un-mapped crossings/segments etc that could screw up routing).
Comment from JesseAKARaccoon on 2 November 2021 at 04:08
Thanks for your feedback, oba510!