TL;DR
Should “named” apartment “streets” that are little more than alleys to parking lots and don’t contain Google Street Views be given a “service” tag in OSM to strip them of nodes in CS?
Context:
There is very little if any deliberate ESS activity in my city aside from myself. For that reason, I’ve ended up being the potentially obnoxious CS OSM editor of Tulsa, OK. But I want to go about it in a way that is minimally invasive to non-CS users of OSM. That’s where I need help.
So far, I have felt callin’ 'em as I see 'em. If the road has changed, I update it. I add gates I find, truly private roads, etc.
I’ve been noticing a lot of apartment complex parking lot “streets” that are officially named in OSM, but not tagged. That means they show up with nodes in CS, but not even on Google Maps with any street view, and they go nowhere besides acting as parking for apartment complexes. Some are even labeled as “Service Rd” on Google Maps. They’re more like named alleys with parking lots.
So, what’s the best way to edit these to take nodes out of them to keep CS runners like myself from annoying tenants or putting them on edge?
From my perspective, these look like a valid streets. People live there and have an address on either of those named streets.
One piece that’s not super obvious is that the middle section of Laplante Circle is not present in CityStrides. If it were, there would be another node or two at that bend in the lower section.
That distinction seems correct to me, because flipping to satellite view you can see that it’s dedicated to parking.
So I guess my question is - would you expect the entire Laplante Circle to be removed from CityStrides … or are you seeing cases where a version of that middle section is present and shouldn’t be?
Semi related - I wouldn’t expect Google Street View to be an indicator of whether or not something should exist in CityStrides. I’d limit points of reference to OpenStreetMap data, since that’s my only source.
I didn’t really address your core question…
I’m unsure offhand of the best way to tag these that works well for OSM in general and for us (and that’s the correct order of importance - the tagging etc in OSM needs to be good for OSM first … we shouldn’t be making edits that are good for CityStrides but bad for OSM in general, if that scenario comes up then it’s up to me to fix things on my site - not saying that you’re doing this, just noting the importance of this for anyone else coming along).
It might help to know the underlying CityStrides query - that’s somewhat hidden away in About the Node, Street, and City Data … here’s the direct link to the CityStrides Street Query - Google Sheets
The image here is an example. The left is City Strides, the right is Google Maps. There’s no street sign for this street - so even if folks wanted to find the apartment complex, they’d just have to know where the turn is or trust some navigation.
The screenshots were helpful to show the details, and are useful if links expire (underlying data deletions etc) … links help a bunch though, when they work: East 62nd Place - CityStrides - the section is the far west side
This correlates to Way: 15056974 | OpenStreetMap which you recently edited
The name tag has always been present on that Way record, so I wonder what it refers to / identifies … the actual name of the street that happens to look like a parking lot … the name of the apartment complex … that kinda thing.
It’s a difficult question because “East 62nd Place” exists six or seven times in the city.
Scrolling back through its Way History: 15056974 | OpenStreetMap we can see that it was created ~16 years ago via a bulk tiger upload. My understanding of these “tiger uploads” is that they were full and cause people lots of pain to this day.
So personally I’d avoid removing names from Way records, but there’s a lot that I don’t know about this. If you want to dive into it more, there’s http://osmus.slack.com and OpenStreetMap World communities to ask in. Otherwise, keep an eye on your notifications in the OSM site to see if anyone comments on your change.
I also get some ”dubious” streets in CS for Stockholm, thinking ”this shouldn’t really be counted”, but since we’re talking about an extra 100 meters or so, I just run it anyway, why not? Unless of course it’s somehow gated, then I edit OSM to say private. But this is Sweden, where we don’t have the concept of running ”the wrong place”. I understand that might be the case in USA…
But I want to go about it in a way that is minimally invasive to non-CS users of OSM. That’s where I need help.
and cause people lots of pain to this day.
personally I’d avoid removing names from Way records, but there’s a lot that I don’t know about this. If you want to dive into it more, there’s