[Tagging] Whispering asphalt

[Paul Allen]

On Thu, 2 May 2019 at 20:57, <amilopowers at u-cloud.ch> wrote:

>
> I used to live in Fribourg, Switzerland where they put "whispering
> asphalt" on one of the main roads in order to prevent noise. You can barely
> hear an EV now, but that is another story.
>
> Since we have quite a lot of discussions about noise pollution I thought
> it might be a good idea to implement a tag for that.
>
> surface=whispering_asphalt or surface=silent_asphalt came to my mind but I
> don't know what the official term for that aspahlt in English is. In German
> we call it "Flüsterbelag" or "Flüsterasphalt".
>

> Then I found on Overpass-Turbo someone that tagged "asphalt:type=porous".
> [1] Since I don't work in that area I don't know for sure if this is the
> same thing as I imagine and I found only one Wikipedia article in German
> [2] about that asphalt I mean.
>

I'd not heard of this stuff (no pun intended) so I did some googling.  As
Tod responded, those of
us who aren't obsessed by asphalt would assume that porous asphalt was
intended for
drainage.  And porous asphalt is indeed used to improve drainage.  But it
can also be used for noise
reduction.  From http://asphaltmagazine.com/turning-the-volume-down/
it seems that the US term for porous asphalt used for noise reduction is
"quiet asphalt."  In the
UK the generic term for low noise surfaces is "low noise surfaces."

I wouldn't use porous_asphalt for several reasons:

1) It might be porous for drainage and have little or no effect on noise.

2) It might be something other than asphalt.

3) It might be asphalt but with grooves rather than being porous (there's
more than one way
to reduce the noise).

I wouldn't use "silent" or "quiet" in the tag despite the US calling it
"quiet asphalt" because it's
quietER not quiet.  So "noise reducing" or something along those lines.

Given that many types of surface might have low noise, we probably need to
keep it independent
of the surface material, otherwise we'll end up with noise_reducing_asphalt,
noise_reducing_concrete, etc.

So, an idea to be taken behind the bikesheds and kicked to death...
surface:noise_reducing=yes.
I'll take the first kick - what do we do when noise_reducing becomes the
norm and then
somebody invents extra_noise_reducing.  And the second kick - how often are
we going to
be able to choose between two routes, one of which is noise-reducing and
one isn't, will
routers support it and will anybody ever want to choose low noise over
shortest route or
fastest route?  Third kick - it may be important to those living nearby,
but they won't need a map
to know if the road is noisy or not.

-- 
Paul
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