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March 5, 2024
Major cities worldwide lack complete, accurate, and detailed datasets on pedestrian infrastructure. Building and maintaining this data is a difficult and time-consuming endeavor, often resulting in old, static datasets. Machine Learning tools can extract sidewalks from aerial imagery, however, these data lack important tags such as curb cuts, crosswalk signals, and street signs.
Many city-managed Open Data Portals offer pedestrian data in polygon format, which is useful for planning and maintenance, but less useful for routing and navigation. Evolving demands for pedestrian data are the highest ever, with OpenStreetMap being a natural space where organizations and individuals can collaborate to create the most detailed maps covering the broadest range of requirements.
To coordinate efforts for mapping pedestrian features, OpenStreetMap US will kickoff the Pedestrian Working Group on Tuesday, March 5th at 1pm PST.