The point of having a separate way is to indicate that it is not possible to cross from one to the other (if you see the sidewalk like a lane), if you take the kerb as an barrier, mapping them separate might have a certain sense (although a kerb is not a serious obstacle for the biggest user group of the sidewalk:t pedestrians).
I wrote a proposal for the area-relation which tries to combine 2 aspects: the area aspect of a road, and the possibility to change from one way to another without connecting node (the router would also consider intersections of another "lane"/highway as valid). We would draw the outer limits of the footway and interpolate the area from there to the center or to the other side of the road. There would not be mapped connections from this way to the centerline or to the other side, but routers could understand that you can cross. For the barriers there is also tags to map them (be it a wall, grass, a kerb, or whatever). Cheers, Martin _______________________________________________ Tagging mailing list Tagging@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/tagging
