OpenStreetMap
Regarding Lougheed Highway in Coquitlam, BC, Canada: Nothing along Lougheed between Sage Place and Schoolhouse is accessible to foot traffic, but much of it claims to be, despite the significant danger. Lougheed appears to be editable in many sections, and I don’t know how to change the entire strip easily. Can someone help? Thank you!
Discussion
Comment from jayaddison on 19 April 2026 at 12:44
Hi Jennifer - thanks for caring about this!
I found some pedestrian directions from north of the highway to the Mayfair industrial area where the OSRM router doesn’t (at the time of writing) seem to find a path or bridge to cross the highway, and follows the highway:
osm.org/directions?engine=fossgis_osrm_foot&route=49.244%2C-122.80676%3B49.233257%2C-122.818383#map=15/49.23860/-122.81324
Is that a good example of the problem?
I’m wondering if the router suggested the highway because pedestrian-suitable paths are not yet mapped (we could fix that), or whether there is some other reason.
If pedestrian-suitable paths/crossings do exist, then adding those to the map would, I think, be the best way to help routers to suggest routes that use those instead.
Could you share an example or two of problematic pedestrian routing? That should help to determine where possible improvements to the map, and/or the routing software, could fix this.
Regards, James
Comment from Jennifer Pownall on 20 April 2026 at 01:45
It looks like someone has solved the problem! Thank you very much!
Comment from jayaddison on 20 April 2026 at 19:03
Firstly, I’m sorry: I missed the point of your question; my reply focused on trying to find possible effects of the pedestrian access configuration, instead of how to edit them.
Off-thread, Jennifer explained (and is OK with me sharing) that the CityStrides app uses OSM data and has sometimes suggested unsuitable routes to run on. The good news is that CityStrides does now exclude segments mapped with the expressway=yes tag (ref). So that should no longer cause a problem.
However: the expressway=yes tag doesn’t completely exclude pedestrian access – and some of these segments are definitely unsuitable for walking. This segment has a ‘description’ tag to explain that: osm.org/way/889380754
Of the OSM tools I know, I think Overpass Turbo is a reasonable way to explore the problem, by writing map data queries.
I’ve drafted two that might help, either here or for future reference:
This highlights segments red where we might want to add foot=no to the map data.
This returns the OSM identifiers of the segments of the highway without foot=no in the bounding box – searching in the iD editor for “way:" for each of those values should allow editing each of them.
I hope that’s helpful - someone else may have better ideas, though! I’ve added a map note to ask local mappers about the status of foot=no for other parts of the highway: osm.org/note/5258339
Comment from rja mapping on 22 April 2026 at 23:21
yeah this is a pretty common issu especially on like highways
you don’t want to edit the whole stretch as one object — the correct approach is to work in segments.
first, open the area in the editor (iD or JOSM) and check how the road is split. it’s usually already divided into multiple ways, and each segment can have different tags like sidewalk=* or foot=*. a lot of the time these get incorrectly set to things like sidewalk=both or foot=yes.
only change what you can actually verify. if there are no sidewalks, use sidewalk=none. if pedestrians are legally prohibited, then use foot=no. if it’s just unsafe but still technically allowed, don’t set foot=no — just fix the sidewalk tagging. thank u for asking a question i live answering
Comment from rja mapping on 22 April 2026 at 23:22
oh lol on top sm1 else answered i wasnt even oaying attention