[OSM-talk] A warning about gates and other barriers

[Frederik Ramm]

Hi,

Cartinus wrote:
> I always tag gates with the assumption that I don't have to tag who they keep 
> out, but only who they let through.

Fair enough, but still I think it is far-fetched to assume that an 
un-tagged gate will be closed to all.

When I map and I see a gate that is open but of which I cannot determine 
if, or when, it might not be so, I still tag it as a gate. I don't have 
more information - just that there is a gate and that it was open to 
traffic on a certain date and time. Now a conservative routing engine 
could of course say: If there's a gate and we don't know whether it'll 
be open, we assume it is closed. That's ok if the user is made aware of 
that, and it certainly is a decision for the routing engine to make.

You cannot make the mapper responsible for deciding whether or not a 
car, or bicycle, routing can go through a barrier; he might not know. 
Treating all un-tagged gates as access=no will lead to mappers entering 
bogus access tags (or not adding the gate at all) in such cases. This is 
hardly desirable.

Bye
Frederik

-- 
Frederik Ramm  ##  eMail frederik at remote.org  ##  N49°00'09" E008°23'33"