[Tagging] Feature Proposal - RFC - parking=street_side

[Jeroen Hoek]

On 24-10-2020 23:54, Paul Allen wrote:
> So tagging for the renderer because, in your opinion, these car parking
> areas are unimportant.

By that line of reasoning tagging highways anything other than
highway=motorway is tagging for the renderer.

I understand your concern, but no, it is not our opinion that these car
parking areas are unimportant (we wouldn't map them if we thought so).

This proposal is not about declaring one type of parking more important
than the other. It does standardise a new parking=* and parking:lane=*
value for a distinct, commonly mapped, and ubiquitous type of parking area.

Because of the way these features are present on the ground, it makes
sense for a renderer to consider a different rendering approach than
they would for a parking garage of parking lot. And yes, for a general
purpose map, that may involve de-emphasizing them.

In the Netherlands we've had a case where a misguided mapper imported
this type of street-side parking area in one city (the import was not
properly discussed and documented and has since been reverted). They
used amentity=parking_space on those areas instead of amenity=parking
(even though most contained at least two parking spaces), because they
didn't like the way amenity=parking rendered on Carto with hundreds of
parking areas mapped.

That is tagging for the renderer. We want to prevent that.

By introducing a relevant sub-tag value renderers and routers may act
on, we prevent tagging for the renderer, and encourage the use of a
semantically correct tag-value. A collatoral effect is that the existing
parking=* values will become less abused (e.g., surface and layby) for
street-side parking. Mappers who want to map street-side parking, can do
so knowing that any rendering issues can be dealt with by any renderer
on the base of the correct sub-tag value.

Whether renderers will act on this or not is of course a stylistic
choice not part of this proposal, but we do offer some suggestions
(under 'Rendering').

Of course, I can fully imagine some types of map or overlay that
actively highlight street-side parking! For example some sort of
'parking-mode' on a router's screen when you are nearing your
destination. Similarly, some users may prefer street-side parking over
parking garages (camper/RV owners perhaps), and instruct their router to
filter on those.

Our proposal facilitates this: renderers can render street-side parking
however they wish, because the tag tells them it is street-side parking.