[OSM-talk] European border control points - could use some help mapping

Rafael Avila Coya ravilacoya at gmail.com
Mon Oct 5 17:15:04 UTC 2015


Hi, Blake:

I agree that border controls in the areas affected by the ongoing
refugee crisis that were disused until recently but are active again,
should be tagged accordingly. What I mean is that in other areas like
Spain with Portugal, those borders aren't staffed at all, any time.

I live just 10 km from the Portugal border. The border in this area is
made by a wide river. Until the 80's there was only one 19th century
bridge, both for car, pedestrians and train [1]. The border control
offices are completely disused, all the time. No staff there whatsoever.

Apart from that, several bridges have been constructed, with no border
control facilities at all, one of them just meters down the river from
the old one [2]. Should we tag those crossings of border? I don't think so.

My opinion is that your schema of border_control=yes + disused=yes could
be ok for the old bridge, but not for other crossing points. And in any
case, in the event that Spain and Portugal would one day activate their
border controls, all bridges would have to build border facilities for
document and goods control. Only that time would make sense to create
the corresponding nodes.

In any case, what I wanted to point out is the reason why you can see so
few border_control nodes in some areas of Europe and so many in others,
like East Europe.

Best,

Rafael.

[1] https://www.openstreetmap.org/way/30641204
[2] https://www.openstreetmap.org/way/6246191

On 05/10/15 17:26, Blake Girardot wrote:
> 
> 
> 
> My experience is that the border control points still exist, they are
> just not always staffed. Traffic still has to pass through them, just
> there may or may not be anyone in the booths.
> 
> That is why I don't think it is wrong to mark them as
> barrier=border_control points, they still are border control points,
> just not staffed regularly or the control is very permissive.
> 
> Which could change until the place is dismantled and made into something
> else or the border no longer exists.
> 
> Also, more and more border control points that were not actively staffed
> are being staffed now due to the refugee crisis.
> 
> I guess if you knew they were not being used, even as a funnel for
> traffic, like they were bypassed totally, you could add disused=yes to
> them.
> 
> Cheers
> blake
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> On 10/5/2015 5:13 PM, Rafael Avila Coya wrote:
>> Hi, Blake:
>>
>> Just a question.
>>
>> Many countries in Europe are part of the Schengen agreement, so there is
>> no passport nor id control of any kind at borders. That's why you don't
>> find almost any border control nodes between Spain and Portugal or
>> France, for example. And those that are mapped should be wrong. Unless
>> we want to mark the border controls that are physically there, but
>> aren't being used. We should use a different tag for that, or qualify
>> the barrier key with a border_control=* new tag, or something similar.
>>
>> Cheers,
>>
>> Rafael.
>>
>> On 05/10/15 16:53, Blake Girardot wrote:
>>> Hi all,
>>>
>>> OSM could really use more barrier=border_control nodes mapped in Europe
>>> both western and eastern. Some countries are pretty good, but some are
>>> really missing most if not all of their border crossing points mapped.
>>>
>>> I am not sure this is something that is really good for armchair mappers
>>> like myself so I was really hoping we all might map a few we have
>>> personal experience with or knowledge of and see if we can't make a dent
>>> in the missing points.
>>>
>>> Here is a map of how the border_control nodes looked a few days ago
>>> in OSM:
>>>
>>> http://umap.openstreetmap.fr/en/map/europe-border-control-points-osm-data_54784#6/48.480/21.160
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> How to map these points (and it is only applicable to single nodes) is
>>> here:
>>>
>>> http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Tag:barrier%3Dborder_control
>>>
>>> I don't think it matters if the barrier is blocking the crossing or not
>>> as long as there is a border control point there.
>>>
>>> Please feel free to forward this to the appropriate country specific
>>> email lists if you think that would help us get a more complete map of
>>> these points.
>>>
>>> Cheers,
>>> Blake (bgirardot)
>>>
>>> _______________________________________________
>>> talk mailing list
>>> talk en openstreetmap.org
>>> https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
>>

-- 
Twitter: @ravilacoya <http://twitter.com/ravilacoya>
*Humanitarian OpenStreetMap Team (HOT)* <http://www.hotosm.org>



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