[Tagging] Snow chains change places: highway or amenity, values?

[Patrick Strasser-Mikhail]

Hello!

[Note: before answering, read this post and also the relevant wiki pages 
sections.]

A few months ago I started a proposal regarding snow chains, and with 
the help of a bunch of people it evolved nicely [kudos]. One thing is left:

It became apparent that places to fit/lay off snow chains go with the 
topic. As there are places both flavors of intention, namely to chain up 
and chain down, the latest idea was to call it "chain_change_area".

There are a wide variety how such places occur:
* Just a stretch of the road/hard shoulder that is dedicated by a road 
sign, much like a emergency bay.
* Sometimes it is longer, maybe several km long, with more width and 
sometimes with street lamps.
* It may be marked as a separate lane, with some marked area that is not 
to be driven on (soft separation).
* The separation can be some physical barrier, making the change place 
more something like a rest area (hard separation).
* It could be a separate dedicated area/lane at a rest area.

So it seems there is need for high flexibility how to tag this.
There are parallels to parking, rest areas, emergency bays, road/hard 
shoulders and bus stops.

My first approach was to go with a value for the highway=* key, because 
it is a highway bound topic, just like highway=rest_area, 
highway=emergency_bay or highway=emergency. But of course this only 
works if this is a dedicated way or a single node tagged. For the case 
of an wider hard shoulder, that is not intended to be driven on on a 
regular basis, this will collide with the proper highway tag for that road.
The question is now: What would be the best tagging structure, which 
key(s), which values, simple yet flexible and expressive?

If you can contribute to this topic, please read the proposal [1] and 
the discussion sections "Object type to use"[2] and "Chain down area" 
[3], and contribute by replying to this post.
In the end I will sum up the outcome and add it to the wiki discussion[a].

[1] 
https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/w/index.php?title=Proposed_features/Snow_chains
[2] 
https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Talk:Proposed_features/Snow_chains#Object_type_to_use
[3] 
https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Talk:Proposed_features/Snow_chains#Chain_down_area

[a] The wiki talk page seems too linear and limited for that type of 
discussion.

[kudos] Great thanks to Minh Nguyen, SK53, Kovposch, Kbroderick, 
Penegal, Carnildo, Gonéo, Mateusz Konieczny, Emilius123, Darrell, 
Mueschel, Breno-au, Aharvey, Skyper, Gabrielesani, Skunk and folks from 
the Austrian OSM Stammtisch for all contributions ranging from typo 
fixes to detailed feedback, ideas and effort you put into this, and 
kindly encouraging me to finalize it!

Best Regards!
Patrick/trapicki
-- 
engineers motto: cheap, fast, good - choose any two
Increase the Awesome, reduce the WTF!