Don't render "highway"=* + "area"="yes"

[BjornRasmussen]

The current rendering of highway=* + area=yes encourages people to map area:highway=* features as highway=* with area=yes, which is incorrect. To fix this, highway=* + area=yes should no longer be rendered. According to taginfo, there are 298,745 features tagged like this.

Examples:

• https://www.openstreetmap.org/way/194428842
• https://www.openstreetmap.org/way/183205906
• https://www.openstreetmap.org/way/386587077
• https://www.openstreetmap.org/way/416470385
  . . . and 298,741 others.

[kocio-pl]

Hi, please make the title of this ticket to be more precise.

Related to #180.

[HolgerJeromin]

Remapping this areas with linear ways seems not a really good idea:
https://www.openstreetmap.org/way/83148575#map=18/50.77707/6.07978
https://www.openstreetmap.org/way/32348177#map=19/50.77695/6.07982

But many of them have linear ways already:
https://www.openstreetmap.org/relation/905098#map=18/50.77597/6.08390 (and others south of this)

[matkoniecz]

Certainly not all highway=values are rendered for areas.

Can you list highway values that should be never rendered as areas and currently are rendered as areas?

[aceman444]

highway+area=yes and highway:area seem to mean different things, so why should highway+area=yes not be rendered? Also highway:area is only an unapproved proposal on the wiki, so there is no reason to somehow base any decisions on it.

Also, in your examples, https://www.openstreetmap.org/way/194428842 actually looks like correct use of highway+area, it is not just the 2D shape of a single road. Also https://www.openstreetmap.org/way/386587077 looks questionable, I haven't looked at aerial imagery of the place.

[Adamant36]

I agree with aceman444 that any decision of rendering shouldn't be based on highway:area. Although they are both highway tags, it doesn't mean the use of one is related to the other. As they have different meanings and different use cases. At least, they should. Even if they didn't though, its not like they are or should be mutually exclusive. There's nothing in the highway:area proposal that says it supersedes highway+area=yes. At least not that I could find.

[matkoniecz]

Also highway:area is only an unapproved proposal on the wiki, so there is no reason to somehow base any decisions on it

Documented tags in widespread use that never went through a proposal process may be rendered or influence rendering decisions. For an example highway=motorway key is one of tags that never went through a proposal process. Going though proposal process is one of indicators that tag is accepted by community but not sole and fundamental one.

[mboeringa]

I agree with aceman444 that any decision of rendering shouldn't be based on highway:area. Although they are both highway tags, it doesn't mean the use of one is related to the other. As they have different meanings and different use cases. At least, they should. Even if they didn't though, its not like they are or should be mutually exclusive. There's nothing in the highway:area proposal that says it supersedes highway+area=yes. At least not that I could find.

The tag is area:highway=x, not highway:area, but you probably meant to write that ;-) :

https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Proposed_features/area:highway

[Tomasz-W]

I would really like to choose one of the schemes for highway areas and go with it.

Current situation is crazy: we have allowed but not documented scheme with "area=yes" which is still consequently added by one users (because it's rendered) and consequently reverted by second ones (because in opionion of some this tag is wrong) at the other hand we have second scheme of area:highway= which is simpler and documented, but as it's not rendered it's less popular.

https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Tag:area:highway%3Dfootway

[kocio-pl]

In general I'm skeptic if we can stay with just one scheme. The days when OSM meant just adding new different are gone, now we have to deal with multiple schemes and balance when to use them.

[polarbearing]

I would really like to choose one of the schemes for highway areas and go with it.

The two schemes have different meanings, which have been clarified in discussions in the past. The fact that there are always some mappers abusing one of them to paint something for the renderer is not an argument to merge the schemes in rendering.

I still want a rendered map that shows me the abstracted topology of the road network, for my own visual orientation, and not the painted road surface. It would be nice to have a separate layer to switch that on as an overlay, but not as the only choice.

[Tomasz-W]

The two schemes have different meanings

Can you describe meaning of both schemes and show the difference between them?

[polarbearing]

Yes.

area:highway=* is proposed to describe the non-routable, detailed shape of a (typically linear) highway. It has some inconsistencies, e.g. some people map area:highway=emergency, where they mean to describe road areas that are painted with white hatching that should be avoided in normal traffic flow, but have nothing to do with emergencies. The tag requires the linear routable direction of the highway mapped as lines with highway=*. Mapping such area:highway is comparable to mapping riverbanks in addition to the linear river flow.

area=yes + highway=* describes an area on which the dedicated traffic can route omnidirectional. There are strong voices that argue that routing engines should consider those omnidirectional objects in addition to nodes+edges in classical graph theory; thus no linear highway lines would be required within.

[matkoniecz]

I am closing it as it is starting to degenerate into tagging discussion and it is already partially implemented.

Certainly not all highway values are rendered for areas.

Please open new issue that lists highway values that should be never rendered as areas and currently are rendered as areas (or open it for a just single higway value that is rendered for areas and should be never rendered for areas).

[matkoniecz]

In short "To fix this, highway=* + area=yes should no longer be rendered." is not a good solution. Some highway=* + area=yes are completely fine and not rendering them is not desirable (highway=pedestrian + area=yes for pedestrian squares is an example).

If there is some higway value that is rendered for areas and should be never rendered for areas - please open a new issue.

[Adamant36]

@mboeringa, yes that's what I meant. Thinks for the correction ;)

As far as the discussion goes, I've seen a few map apps render highway=* + area=yes. I haven't seen any render the other tag though. I think the rendering of the highway=* + area=yes is partly due to the fact that this map does, which works as a feedback loop for people to map things that way. So, while area=yes might not be documented or whatever it would be bad to base a rendering decision on that. Since its clearly in semi widespread use. Whatever the wiki details are.

[BjornRasmussen]

OsmAnd is currently the only software that renders area:highway. Anyway, I now know that there is a difference between area:highway and highway + area=yes.

[kocio-pl]

There's also area:highway layer rendering only for Poland (we just lack server resources to show the whole planet):

http://osmapa.pl/w/area/