Tagging lanes for non-highway features

system · July 18, 2023, 10:48am

Hi all,

The lanes=* key is, according to its wiki page, only to be used for highway=* elements. Yet other mappable features can have lanes.

Three that immediately spring to mind are running tracks, swimming pools, and 10 pin bowling alleys.

For running tracks (amongst other types included in leisure=track), the wiki recommends using lanes=* in contradiction to that key’s own page.
For swimming pools, the key swimming_lanes=* is in use.
For bowling alleys, no guidance is given though I did start a talk topic about this a while back (with no responses).

I think it would be useful for us to agree on a consistent approach here.

Should lanes=* only be used in conjunction with highway=*? If so:

Why? Surely data consumers aren’t expecting lanes=* as a stand-alone tag, so it’s straightforward enough to understand the context based on the primary tag. Why should usage be exclusive to highways? We don’t restrict surface=* just to highways for example.
How should “lanes” for other features be mapped? Does it make sense to keep creating new keys for each feature (e.g. swimming_lanes=*, bowling_lanes=* etc.)?
Perhaps using some namespace tagging? E.g., swimming_pool:lanes=*, bowling_alleys:lanes=* (or even highway:lanes=*).

Interested to hear your thoughts…

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