I've noticed that the routing engines avalable on OSM.org often route pedestrians down the roadway when a sidewalk is mapped as a separate way. I added the It's not a big thing, but It'd be nice if they routed on the sidewalk when it's available. Edit here's an example. asked 04 Aug '21, 02:19  keithonearth edited 04 Aug '21, 15:53 |
One Answer:
I know of this dedicated Routago pedestrian routing engine. It was specifically developed for blind people to receive safe walking routes. For that reason it might not always produce the shortest route but it uses sidewalks. answered 04 Aug '21, 09:56  TZorn |
It might be worth providing a link to a specific example, in case there is something about the mapping that could be improved.
As an aside, I wouldn't use the routing engines on osm.org for anything too serious - they're basically just there to say "you can do routing with this data". For example:
https://www.openstreetmap.org/directions?engine=fossgis_osrm_foot&route=53.99224%2C-0.91063%3B53.99115%2C-0.91367#map=13/53.9931/-0.9093&layers=N
seems to think that "how trunk roads are mapped in Germany" applies to the rest of the world, and ignores the "sidewalk" tag on https://www.openstreetmap.org/way/132453634#map=18/53.99166/-0.91227&layers=N altogether. For completeness
https://www.openstreetmap.org/directions?engine=graphhopper_foot&route=53.9922%2C-0.9106%3B53.9912%2C-0.9137#map=18/53.99169/-0.91216&layers=N
doesn't make the same mistake.
Solving this globally is a hard problem to solve, and not really a fair thing to ask of a simple proof-of-concept.