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

Volker Schmidt voschix at gmail.com
Tue Sep 29 11:54:12 UTC 2020


May I injection another complication: In many jurisdictions the width
available to the moving traffic is defined by white lines on the tarmac
creating an additional safety/buffer zone between the marked parking spaces
and the flowing traffic.

On Tue, 29 Sep 2020, 12:52 Pieter Vander Vennet, <pietervdvn at posteo.net>
wrote:

> Hey Alex,
>
> First of all, I didn't consult the community for this project, I just
> wanted to get it rolling. We pondered a long time about how to measure
> for our local situation, not about what would be the most appropriate
> tag for use worldwide. Sorry for that and again, if in these discussions
> a better consensus pops up, I'll retag.
>
> I included parking lane width, as in some cases there are no lines on
> the ground indicating where the parking lane begins. We just have a
> traffic sign indicating that parking is allowed. As a result, the area
> available for traffic can vary when a very small car or very wide car is
> parked - the main reason we went with a curb-to-curb distance -
> including parking-lanes.
>
> The actual width available for traffic is then calculated based on OSM
> data. Can cars go in one or two directions? Can bicycles go in one or
> two directions? Are sidewalks present?
>
> I understand that 'width:carriageway' is confused with the room
> available for traffic. On the other hand, parked cars are a 'carriage'
> as well ;)
> Furhtermore, in my opinion, saving a 'width:traffic_area' directly into
> OSM is unnecessary (as an indicative value can be calculated from the
> other, more objective properties) and is even a bit subjective and prone
> to change (e.g. due parked cars). Did you know that the avarage car has
> gotten ~30cm wider since 1960? This means that the calculation of
> 'traffic_area' should be changed every few years.
>
> Also keep in mind that in the city center of Bruges, where we did those
> measurements, we don't have the 'half-on-curb' rules and have only a few
> perpendicular/diagonal parking lanes (which I conveniently ignored).
>
> Anyway, I'm not planning on getting too involved in this discussion (I
> have other things to do). However, Alex, I would propose to turn around
> your logic: not to map the traffic area, but to map 'width:carriageway'
> as 'curb-to-curb' distance, and mapping the 'parking:lane:left:width'
> and 'parking:lane:right:width'-values. If the parking lane doesn't have
> lines (and thus the width isn't well defined), software can choose a
> sensible default for the region. This would also work for
> 'half-on-kerb': if there is a line, one can use the line to determine
> the width. If not, software can use a sensible default.
>
> The drawback of this scheme is that software which wants to work with
> this data should be somewhat complicated right from the start.
>
> --
> Met vriendelijke groeten,
> Pieter Vander Vennet
>
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