[Tagging] "width" on streets: Time for a recommendation

[Tobias Zwick]

Absolutely high time! Thank you for bringing this up.

I was under the impression that the wiki already defined it like 2). 1) 
is not practical because parking lanes can be informal or can change 
quickly, 3) is also not practical because sidewalks + additional 
greenery/space between road and sidewalk can vary a lot.

I plan to soon implement a "What is the width of this road" quest in 
StreetComplete where the user can measure the width of the road using 
his or her smartphone (similar to the app Measure from Google [1]). The 
app will need to instruct the user very clearly what should be measured.

The instruction "curb to curb" is pretty clear. However, there is one 
more problem to solve, what about if there are no curbs? For example, 
track-like roads that just consist of either one strip of asphalt 
surface or are not paved at all? I see two possible definitions:

 1. Width of the paved surface (if paved)
 2. Usable width of the road

1 has the advantage that there is no room for interpretation, but falls 
short of what to do with unpaved roads. 2 leaves some room for 
interpretation but also covers cases where the usable width of the road 
is much different from the width of the paved part of the road.

Tobias

[1] https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.google.tango.measure

On 14.09.20 20:34, Supaplex wrote:
>
> Hey all,
>
> again and again there are discussions about which parts of a street 
> (sidewalks and cycle paths, parking lanes, carriageway) should be 
> considered when determining the width of a street. There does not seem 
> to be a consensus and therefore information on street widths is 
> difficult to interpret or is not even mapped. The following variants 
> are common/are discussed:
>
> 1) Width of the actual carriageway, without parking lanes and sidewalks
> 2) Width between curbs / edges of the road without sidewalks, but with 
> parked cars when they are on street
> 3) Width including sidewalks / roadside paths
>
> I tend to option 2):
> - The width can be clearly defined and measured
> - The width of the actual carriageway can be determined by using 
> "parking:lane" scheme correctly (or alternatively/supplementarily by 
> specifying the width of parking lanes). "width:carriageway" (or 
> "width:lanes", if there are marked lanes) also could be used to map 
> this width directly.
> - The width of roadside paths can optionally be specified with 
> "sidewalk:width" etc.
>
> Wouldn't it be time to document a recommendation in the Wiki to reduce 
> further ambiguities? Which variant is the most recommendable? Anyway, 
> the width of a street is a significant value to evaluate its 
> suitability or safety for certain modes of transport or to determine 
> the speed that can be expected there.
>
> Thanks for your comments,
> Alex
>
>
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