Hi, This email refers to the mapping of individual parking spaces amenity=parking_space within car parks amenity=parking, where the car park is also mapped. It does not refer to ad-hoc groups of 1-5 parking spaces. A few mappers have mapped like this. I’ve long been sceptical about the practice but haven’t acted. And, while it might be marginally useful (even ‘cute’) to show the spaces, it feels like 'mapping for the renderer'. Mapping the car park outline and the parking aisles probably achieves as much, but with much less effort.
Specific issues that I have encountered: * It is double mapping, which can result in the number of spaces, in total or in any category, being miscounted. OSM has the principal of one object in the real world, one object on the map. Yes, there are sometimes complications that need nuanced mapping, but I don’t think this is one. * Some car parks have dedicated wheelchair-accessible, family-friendly, bus or other special category parking spaces. Double counting them might be a particular problem - someone expecting 4 bus parking spaces at a site shows up to find that there are only 2. Yes, showing people where the special category parking spaces are located is useful, but these are usually located according to a (not always obeyed) hierarchy of what is closest to the destination entrance - public transport, bike spaces, wheelchair accessible spaces, family-friendly spaces, electric vehicles, other vehicles. * The number of spaces are sometimes miscalculated by the mapper, e.g. there are 9 parking spaces in a row, but only 8 are mapped covering the area of the 9. This results in a need to change all the individual spaces, instead to only one car park. * During the lifecycle of the parking space, details can change. For example, the Blanchardstown Centre has 7,000 parking spaces (not all mapped) that are being converted to pay parking. * When a car park is removed / built upon, potentially hundreds of individual parking spaces have to be retagged / removed. There were 867 parking spaces in this temporary car park: https://www.openstreetmap.org/way/1167858985 and they are now all gone. There are approximately 1,431 parking spaces in these car parks, with a chunk of them now built on: https://www.openstreetmap.org/way/1296475241 and https://www.openstreetmap.org/way/1365517863 Hundreds of more spaces have been added in the real world (not yet mapped). Grange Castle probably has 8,000 parking spaces (not all mapped), most of them are temporary spaces for construction workers that will disappear in 1-2 years. Overall, it creates an unnecessary maintenance burden, especially when mappers want to add more tags or deal with removal. There is a separate, but similar issue of car parks (with say 50 spaces) being mapped as several separate car parks (say 5 car parks each with 10 spaces), for fear of mapping across a non-parking aisle service road, path or patch of grass, e.g. here: https://www.openstreetmap.org/way/1429772350/ or here: https://www.openstreetmap.org/way/42873673/ or here: https://www.openstreetmap.org/way/905605692 Any thoughts? Thank you Colm --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has. Margaret Mead _______________________________________________ Talk-ie mailing list [email protected] https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-ie
