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Or, to put it another way, how would I map streets where parking changes the effective number of lanes?

There are quite a few streets in my local area where parking - mostly at specific times - essentially converts a street from a two-lane two-way street to, effectively, a one-lane one-way-at-a-time-without-priority street.

For example, there are residential streets near our local hospital that are normal two-way two-lane streets. However, during hospital visiting hours - due to a lack of parking spaces in the hospital grounds and the high price to park there - many visitors prefer to park on each side of those surrounding streets. These parallel columns of cars along both sides of the street mean that only one vehicle can traverse the street at any one time - the drivers at each end having to "argue" between themselves, somehow, usually largest car "wins" - as to who has priority.

In another related example, outside local schools, the same sort of streets become similarly "narrowed" during times when parents drop off their children - before school - or pick them up - after school.

While the physical street remains the same and "general navigation" (whatever I mean by that) is not seriously affected, there will be occasions where someone will ask their navigation software for the quickest route and it might send them down one of these streets at a time when they are congested because the software doesn't know about the parking.

This problem further affects large vehicles such as delivery trucks and, more importantly, fire engines and ambulances which sometimes can't get down these streets at all during these times (depending on how badly people have parked). These large vehicles have to reverse - sometimes back onto a main road - and then find an alternative route.

This can be a very serious issue: Not so long ago - and it wasn't a one-off event - a house burned down because the fire engines couldn't get to it as the street was blocked by parked cars.

Would this be something that could - or should - be mapped? And if so, how?

A quick search on the OSM Forum for "parking congestion" returned no hits at all. (Maybe I'm not using the right keywords.)

I've also looked a the GB TagInfo "parking" tags but I'm baffled by the choices - 157 items - and I could be looking at the wrong thing. I.e. Would I map this as a parking thing, or a highway thing? I'm too much of a newbie to know the right way round to think about this sort of thing.

asked 22 Jan '15, 13:16

Garry%20Patchett's gravatar image

Garry Patchett
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accept rate: 0%


I'm not sure whether parking congestion should be mapped, but you could tag the road with the number of lanes (2, for 1 each way), and add parking:lane:both=parallel tags. I doubt routing software would use it until such detail is more widespread, though, and I don't think there is a way of tagging the average amount full such parking lanes might be at different times of the day.

Here's an example of where the tagging is used, and displayed, in Germany.

permanent link

answered 22 Jan '15, 13:35

EdLoach's gravatar image

EdLoach ♦
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accept rate: 22%

Thanks for your reply @EdLoach. The parking:lane:both=parallel tag sounds good and the example is great but I'll hold off using it for now until I get a better grasp of tags/namespaces. I don't want to map anything that I don't understand, but I'll definitely put it on my todo list (possibly with parking:condition:both=free, if I've got this right). Cheers.

(23 Jan '15, 12:50) Garry Patchett
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question asked: 22 Jan '15, 13:16

question was seen: 3,263 times

last updated: 23 Jan '15, 12:50

NOTICE: help.openstreetmap.org is no longer in use from 1st March 2024. Please use the OpenStreetMap Community Forum