text: I don't think any of the arguments advanced have much merit and AFAICT they all have been discussed in the wiki and forum with similar conclusion. Specifically, rendering is a separate issue (and having a separate path makes it arguably more confusing); it makes routing worse by preventing crossing out of the designated crossings; it should be perfectly acceptable to delete/update other people's work when it's incorrect or can be improved; the wiki clearly says this situation should be mapped as sidewalk=. But I bow based on the prevalence of regional variation. I hope this will be revisited in the future (possibly with tooling that allows for seamless mass conversion).
  
  https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Sidewalks#Regional_variations