[Tagging] highway=services

[John F. Eldredge]

In Tennessee, USA, where I live, the Interstates (motorways) both "parking areas" (no services other than a place to park temporarily) and "rest areas" (with parking, rest rooms, soft drink/candy machines, and frequently local tourist-information pamphlets.  They may or may not have an attendant on band.  In other states, I have seen full-service truck stops in the center of the Interstate.

-- 
John F. Eldredge -- john at jfeldredge.com
"Reserve your right to think, for even to think wrongly is better than not to think at all." -- Hypatia of Alexandria

-----Original Message-----
From: Craig Wallace <craigw84 at fastmail.fm>
Date: Fri, 28 May 2010 00:58:12 
To: <tagging at openstreetmap.org>
Subject: Re: [Tagging] highway=services

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

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