My main issue with this is not technical details about how they work,
but about how they are used. They look like an elevator, act like one
and serve exactly the same purpose. You press a button, they come, the
doors open, you press a button inside to go up or down, etc.
They are used on relatively short distances, often alongside escalators.
Funiculars to me look more like trains, and have a different
connotation: something you have to buy a ticket for, that go longer
distances, etc. In the end it's a common issue with categories being
inherently fuzzy and we have to draw a distinction somewhere.
I would have no problem if the wiki instructed to model inclined
elevators as funiculars even if it might not be technically correct.
But it isn't:
https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Tag:highway%3Delevator#How_to_Map_as_a_Way
(and this page is also referenced from the funicular page) so there is
an ambiguity.
How do I tag the inclined elevator close to where I live? With
highway=elevator, as stated on the wiki and which seems more technically
correct? But then the maps don't display it and it's typically not
included in navigation software. Or do I tag it as a funicular because
at least it will be displayed on maps, even though it's technically
wrong and goes against the wiki?
This also creates a chicken an egg problem. Mappers don't use
highway=elevator because it's not supported, and then developers may
refuse to consider it because it's not commonly used...
Guillaume
On 2020-12-04 22:58, Joseph Eisenberg wrote:
I've looked into these.
Most inclined elevators seem to also operate with cables, with the
difference being that in a funicular there are 2 cars attached to 1
cable, so one ascends while the other descends, but in an inclined
elevator each car (or there might only be 1 car) is attached to a
counterweight or a winch.
Unfortunately it looks like most uses of the tag highway=elevator on a
way are actually areas (closed ways):
https://overpass-turbo.eu/s/10S8 - 3080 highway=elevator ways are
closed. A review of a few of these suggests they are mostly 4 node
rectangular ways which represent the area of a verticle elevator.
About half are tagged |indoor=room| - https://overpass-turbo.eu/s/10Se
vs
https://overpass-turbo.eu/s/10S9 - 190 ways which are not closed.
These look to be inclined elevators, though in some cases it’s not
possible to tell if they might actually be a funicular instead.
While railway=funicular is 10 times as common, this might or might not
represent the actual relative frequency of these features in the real
world, I don’t know.
The wiki page text says that a railway=funicular is "A funicular, also
known as an inclined plane or cliff railway, is a cable railway in
which a cable attached to a pair of tram-like vehicles on rails moves
them up and down a steep slope, the ascending and descending vehicles
counterbalancing each other.”
However, the description in the infobox (which is much more commonly
seen in places like taginfo and iD) is only “Cable driven inclined
railway” - and this could include many types of "inclined elevators”
which mostly run on rails too. So mappers might be using
railway=funicular for inclined elevators already.
-- Joseph Eisenberg
On Thu, Dec 3, 2020 at 2:55 PM Graeme Fitzpatrick
<[email protected] <mailto:[email protected]>> wrote:
On Fri, 4 Dec 2020 at 08:33, Guillaume Chauvat
<[email protected] <mailto:[email protected]>> wrote:
Yes, but this is a node, not a way. Inclined elevators require
a way and those are not displayed properly.
Sorry, didn't get what you were getting at!
Graeme
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