[Tagging] highway=services

[Craig Wallace]

On 27/05/2010 22:09, Liz wrote:
> rest area has been redirected to highway=services with a note to a Wikipedia
> entry.
> The wikipedia entry is huge and after much scrolling down the page it becomes
> quite obvious that "Rest Area" has many meanings on highways worldwide.
> While highway=services is well explained, redirecting other phrases to the
> same point is not justified.
> "Rest Area" signed on highways near me merely means that there is room to pull
> off the road and park. Next available facility is a bin for garbage, sometimes
> a picnic table, but it certainly does not mean highway=services.
> rest_area has not been used for anything in OSM (yet) so directing it to a
> particular tag is inappropriate.

In the UK, these would usually be known as a "lay-by".
It may just be a space to pull over and park, or it may be more 
separated, with trees/grass between it and the road. And as you say, it 
may also have a bin or a picnic table, and maybe a burger van in the 
busier lay-bys.

I've been thinking about the best way of tagging these. I've noticed 
quite a few of them near me have been tagged as amenity=parking, which 
is accurate, in that it is a place to park. Maybe also worth an extra 
tag to specify what sort of parking it is, eg parking=lay-by ?
Some of them are also mapped with a short way tagged as highway=service 
(not highway=services !), to connect it to the main road.


Craig