Hi Simon

Am 25.08.2017 um 00:08 schrieb Raphael Das Gupta (das-g):

In what I assumed up today to be the consensus, there are two cases when sidewalks should already now be drawn separately:

1. (as already mentioned) when separated from the street by space (i.e., not actually laterally connected to the street)
2. when separated from the street by a barrier (e.g. as seen here on the right-hand side)

In all other cases, for the time being, the presence (or absence) of sidewalks should indeed be represented by additional tags on the street's way rather than dedicated ways for the sidewalks, and I'm not even sure whether we should pursue

That is fine and dandy, but in reality, particularly in busy central city areas which are likely the most important for pedestrian routing, the case is not so clear cut. You can essentially zoom randomly to any Swiss city and the sidewalks will be at the curb for a couple of meters then there will be parking lots, then a bus stop, street furniture, grass and then perhaps nothing for another piece, all on just one side of a 100m stretch of road. Switching back and forward between mapping schemes on the same "segment" is going to be disastrous from a routing pov.