[OSM-talk] How to tag lanes, not ways, was: Deprecating the use of Tag:highway=stop in favour of Key:stop

[John Smith]

2009/8/30 Anthony <osm at inbox.org>:
> True but the example did not show why that was needed.  Looking at
> commercial mapping software, the typical solution is to split the way.

This whole discussion started because of people wanting to do weird
things to show how a stop sign was applicable to a lane not a way,
there is also cases of other restrictions like maxheight and maxspeed
effecting a lane but not both lanes.

> Or traffic cones, or a painted median.  Should the ways model the physical
> or the logical?  Again looking at commercial mapping software, the answer is
> logical.  The question they ask is whether or not you're supposed to be able
> to make turns or change lanes, not what the physical road description is.

My only experience in this area is with OSM and someone somewhere
obviously decided to do it based on physical, it's certainly less
complicated that way, however we just need to tag some lanes in a
minority of cases for a particular reason, but most of the time all
lanes on the way will be symmetrical and tagging the ways should
cascade down to lanes unless something overrides it.