Hi Manuel,

Agree 100%. I love how free-form tagging in OSM is, and that different mappers have different priorities in what to map. I think pedestrian and cyclist routing is a Unique Selling Point of OSM and find OSM based apps better for this than the big commercial competitor. But it’s frustrating to watch someone expend a lot of effort for very little gain. I raised the issue of a local mapper mapping sidewalks as separate ways in the OSMGB mailing list, but nobody seemed particularly concerned. Check out this example: https://www.openstreetmap.org/way/1026047819#map=18/51.51120/-0.26978 Firstly, this neighbourhood is like most neighbourhoods in London (and probably most cities) where it’s safe to assume that every road has a sidewalk on both sides. You could arguably not tag sidewalks at all and accept the implication that you can walk alongside any road. Next level for pedestrian routing would be to tag the rare cases where there’s a sidewalk missing on one side. And better still, to tag sidewalk=both/left/right/none where appropriate. The sidewalks in this neighbourhood don’t even have the crossings marked - if I walk north along the north/south bit of Summerlands Avenue, can I really not cross the road without going all the way around the block? In my area, rather than mapping separate sidewalks I have been adding even the informal crossings - the street corners with drop kerbs and sometimes tactile paving. It’s useful because Overpass Turbo creates a nice reporting tool for lobbying the council to complete the task of adding tactile paving where it’s missing. Have you seen Pic4Review? It seems to be unavailable for me at the moment but I was able to really easily create a “mission” for people to use mapillary imagery to tag all the crossing points with whether they have a drop kerb and/or tactile paving: https://pic4review.pavie.info/#/mission/2738/summary Once roads are mapped I’d move onto buildings because they help update Nominatim and make addresses searchable but I accept that’s a matter of preference, but if you’re going to map separate sidewalks, get them right! I also deleted a sidewalk that had been partially mapped the other day - I gave the person several months to make an attempt to complete it (by putting more separate sidewalks in) and they didn’t. The road in question already had sidewalk tags on so I deleted the superfluous information.

Thanks for writing the diary - I’ve been recording street level imagery in my area (https://www.mapillary.com/app/?lat=51.50138625980165&lng=-0.33074324317226456&z=12.412109168034068) for a few years and it makes me feel less weird that other people understand the point! I started off with a GoPro Hero 9 Black and now also have a GoPro Max, partly to record evidence of dangerous driving when I’m cycling (with four reports to police over three years) and partly on the recommendation of the Mapillary forum. There’s not much more rewarding than when other people start updating OSM in your area based on imagery that you’ve captured! My biggest disappointment is that even with a GoPro Max mounted on my bike helmet, the imagery is usually too fuzzy to read addresses. One of the reasons I want to contribute is because I think the UK Address Database (The Postcode Address File) should be open data, and the closer OSM gets to a complete dataset, the less value the PAF has as a proprietary dataset that they demand megabucks for. Anyway, how have you found the image quality for reading door numbers? Thanks again! Steven

@MccCon, that’s great, and good point about WhoDidIt being a useful alternative for the times OSMCha isn’t working.

Regarding adopting areas, it currently feels a bit random which areas are being watched. The binding box I defined currently spans approximately two London Boroughs, and I have no idea if anyone is watching updates to neighbouring boroughs.

It would work best if people covered areas they are familiar with so that they can tell whether plausible updates are real or not.

I’ve occasionally caught issues in the area I’m watching, and I wonder how many incorrect updates go unnoticed?

One thing that regularly comes up in my feed of local authority changes is School Streets. I’ve been tagging the conditional access but doubt any routers use the information yet?

It does facilitate producing a map view of the school streets in Overpass Turbo though! https://overpass-turbo.eu/s/1F28

@MxxCon thanks, I hadn’t seen that one before!

@SK53, thanks, yes, I use OSMCha to watch what others are mapping in my local area and use the RSS feed functionality there too. It displays the OSM-centric view of how an area is changing. Has there been any concerted effort to get volunteers to “adopt” an area of the map and watch them for new mapper mistakes and for deliberate vandalism? Seems like it might be a good idea as a QA mechanism?

The Gazette lists the changes that the highway authority proposes, so it’s a good way to get a list of new things that may not yet be reflected in OpenStreetMap, though the notices are usually posted a couple of months in advance of the changes actually happening because the notice provides the mechanism for residents and other interested parties to object or otherwise respond to the proposals.

I’ve often posted notes to OSM linking to the Gazette notice recording that something is due to change in the near future, with suggestions of how it can be tagged, in the hope that someone else more local might have their attention drawn to something new and unmapped once the changes are complete.