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Hello,

Is there a way to add pavements/paths to the sides of roads?

I use OSM to create courses in Garmin Connect and found a difference between the course distance and the actual run distance for a race I ran (e.g. course in OSM showed 5.1km so thought I'd run 5.1km and set a 5km PB to find I'd only ran 4.9km). I understand GPS accuracy and accuracy of OSM will have contributed to the difference but I also spotted that OSM assumes I travel down the centre of the road rather than to the side of the road, e.g. on a pavement. Running the same stretch of road several times as part of a planned course amplifies the difference between OSM and the reality of running on the side of a road.

If it is not currently possible to add paths/pavements to roads in OSM, it would be a good addition so that OSM safely routes different users accordingly and so that planned courses/distances better match the real run/walk/hike.

Any advice appreciated.

thanks,

nick

asked 22 Jul '20, 10:14

Nicholas_rubin's gravatar image

Nicholas_rubin
11112
accept rate: 0%


Yours is an interesting addition to the various use-cases for mapping pavements (en-GB)/ sidewalks (en-US) separately. Most others relate to access for those with limited sight or mobility. However, for a range of reasons many prefer to attach information about the properties of sidewalks to the way representing the road centreline.

You could using a GIS tool create additional ways parallel to the roads offset by the distance between the centreline and the centre of the sidewalk, and use these for calculating actual distance. In principle this could be done of a large scale, but it always tends to run into the fact that correctly connecting ways in OSM's joined up data model is not readily automatable (see Richard Fairhurst's recent paper on OSM for data owners). It might actually be easier just to calculate a parameter to scale the distance for each route segment.

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answered 22 Jul '20, 13:12

SK53's gravatar image

SK53 ♦
28.1k48268433
accept rate: 22%

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question asked: 22 Jul '20, 10:14

question was seen: 1,109 times

last updated: 22 Jul '20, 13:12

NOTICE: help.openstreetmap.org is no longer in use from 1st March 2024. Please use the OpenStreetMap Community Forum