[Tagging] Feature Proposal - RFC - area:highway

[Tobias Knerr]

Stefan Bethke wrote:
> Others have already described issues with tagging things like you propose, I'd like to add one concrete intersection that I feel is missing a lot of detail, quite a bit significant to (potential) routers and renderers:
> 
> http://www.openstreetmap.org/?lat=53.569837&lon=10.027266&zoom=18&layers=M
> For comparison: http://maps.google.com/?ie=UTF8&hq=&ll=53.569829,10.026878&spn=0.0015,0.003468&t=h&z=19 (about two years old, a couple of details have changed since.)
> 
> As you can see, some attemps have been made to represent areas where pedestrians and bikes are allowed, but a lot of detail is (still) missing.
> 
> I don't see how your proposal would model for example the bus bay at the stop next to the Subway on Mundsburger Damm, and the adjoining parking spots, at least not easily.
>
> Or the intersection of Mundsburger Damm, Uhlenhorster Weg, Heideweg, and Birkenau, just to the south west on Mundsburger Damm.

Thank you for your example.

Modelling the bus bay and parking spots as ways would still work
acceptably well, imo, at least if you don't want to see individual
parking spot outlines.

I admit, however, that algorithms like the one I sketched can only be
used on separate roads and maybe crossings, but not on many of the more
complex junction layouts.

> Drawing areas from aerial pics or from carefully selected waypoints seems straightforward to me, putting ways "just so" that the medians between the ways fall on the
actual borders between the areas seems unnecessarily complicated, and
would likely require significant support in the editor.

Clicking a few times roughly in the middle of a lane is not hard at all.
I don't care about centimeter precision, to be honest.

But all right, I can see why separate areas might be the better solution
after all.

I'm still not really sure either way, though, and I kind of think that
it's too early for /anyone/ to honestly know that the proposed approach
is the best way to go. I therefore expect that proposal to be tested in
practice (-> mapping and applications) before a vote.

-- Tobias Knerr