[Tagging] Parking Lots

[Steve Bennett]

On Sun, May 16, 2010 at 3:18 AM, Serge Wroclawski <emacsen at gmail.com> wrote:
> Says that amenity=parking should only be used for parking lots, and
> not other less formal parking.

Specifically "A parking lot is an area reserved for parking cars,
trucks, motorcycles etc. Parking spaces along streets are currently
not tagged. Only parking lots of reasonable size are mapped, not every
place where a car could be parked."

IMHO, that looks like the kind of simple statement that made sense in
the earlier days. Now, we should extend the definition to allow those
smaller details to be mapped.

Some obvious thoughts:
- tag roads with "parking=parallel/angle/right-angle" whene there is
parking along both sides of a road.
- allow very small parking lots to be mapped, and leave it up to the
renderer whether or not to display them
- improve the range of access controls. I find "access=private" really
too simplistic. For example, universities often have parking for the
general public/students (paying), staff (permit required), and senior
staff (individual allocated spaces). Where I work there are 4
different colour codes, each requiring different permits.
- indicate who is providing the parking: a corporation for profit,
local government, a business, a park...

Anyway, fwiw, I completely disregard the "reasonable size" rule. It
sort of makes sense for nodes (ie, don't make an "amenity=parking"
node to represent only 6 spots), but not really for areas (the end
user will clearly see that it's a tiny car park, and can make their
own decisions accordingly).

Steve