Hi All,
I wonder how I best using tags for adding the information that no snow removal is performed on the street. (This can be extremely important information for route planning.)
Thanks in advance,
Mikael
In Finland some have used
seasonal:winter=no
to mark roads/tracks which have no snow removal and are marked with sign “Ei talvikunnossapitoa / Ej vinterunderhåll”
Example of bilingual sign:
http://farm1.static.flickr.com/241/456653860_fcf2c760b7.jpg?v=0
Another (better example) of such sign usage
http://www.flickr.com/photos/juandemiguelinkatu/4093095799/
I posted the same question a while ago in the german subforum. there seems not to be useful solution at the moment. we should make a proposal including a nice solution for tagging winter service, since there can be different values: no snow removal at all vs. full winter service vs. partial winter service (only on dangerous spots and so on). and iut is definitely an important information we should include in OSM. therefore we first need an overview of what types of winter service restrictions may apply in different countries in order to develop a generic approach. maybe there is even a need to include (namespace!) the type of winter service applied (road salt vs. snow plow vs. gravel, sand and so on)
might be a better approach instead of just using seasonal:winter=no which - in my opinion - is not an ideal solution.
My experience from Sweden is that we have no winter maintenance at all or full winter maintenance and what is included in the full winter maintenance depends on the weather. What can differ is which roads that has the highest priority to get the winter maintenance after for example a snow storm. Something like “winter_maintenance=yes/no” or “winter_maintenance=yes/no/high_priority/medium_priority/low_priority” would therefore probably work fine for Swedish roads.
Not only are some footways snowplowed, but the others return to a usable state just by other people walking on them - although, naturally, not for the elderly. And that happens within a varying time; some have so much traffic that they’re mostly usable within hours of a snowfall, while others might be full of untouched snow still few days later - or even though the whole winter. Somewhere in the wiki the tag ‘trailblazing’ was mentioned for snowplowed ways, used as an sort-of-alternative to seasonal:winter=no …
The maintenance priority could be entered, at least with local knowledge, but is something that would benefit from a list of promised/intended service levels, as in how the maintaining authority has defined the levels. Which might range from “snowplowed within an hour of snowfall and once every four hours in continuous snowfall” to “when all other roads have been cleared, which could be up to a week after the last major snowfall” (and in practice could be even later than that).
I think that using the priority is a good idea as the councils in the UK publish their priority roads.
what about countries without a priority system? how would they fit in your service levels? Switzerland has a simple yes/no/limited winter service system (at least there are no published priority lists), and other countries might as well.
In addition I’d like to see an additional tag to specify the type of winter service (plowing, just salt, sand and so on).
I think you won’t get that information from a survey on site. And if you ask the local authorities I can imagine it will also be a “on time” decission what method of snow removal they will be use according to the current waether conditions.
well no, I can get the information on site since I live in my town and know how the streets are treated. And there are cities following different approaches like e.g. not using salt on smaller roads and footways but gravel and sand instead. and they do that each winter, no matter how conditions are. but you are right often it is a on time decision. but that doesn’t interfere with my idea: if you know the local authorities use plowing, salt and sand depending on weather conditions, then we tag that they use those 3 types. The basic concept behind the idea is to have the quantity and quality of winter service, and thus monitoring and including as much information as possible. in the end (for example) a navigation software could include those information and form - according to their own interpretation - a street rating… if you have low temperatures and a street is not salted but only plowed you should probably avoid the street when having bad winter tires, even if they plow 10x a day. and if you are in a wheelchair a path with gravel and sand as winter service might be not as appropriate to use compared to a salted/plowed one. with an old timer you might avoid heavily salted roads or roads with gravel since it will hurt the bodywork (ok if you are really anal about the condition of your old timer you won’t touch it during winter 
). the road surface will be different depending on winter service type (And many other variables!), no matter how often you service it.
I just like to distinguish between quantity and quality of winter service. that gives us more flexibility and information content.
oh and in addition the winter service tag should be enough flexible to include those salt/gravel/sand boxes you often have on footways and sidewalks. maybe an amenity tag is better suited for that. but at least the type of content and so forth should be congruent with the winter service tag concept (reusing existing tags/prefixes/suffixes).
What happened to “inquire locally about road conditions”? I see this all the time on paper maps 
oh nice! we could use this and replace 90% of all tags currently used. would make mapping much easier.
According to http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Map_Features, the sand box seems to already exist. “amenity=grit_bin”.
If we would like to include all kinds of winter maintenance I can add heat to salt/snow plow/gravel/sand. In some cities in Sweden radiators are placed under some central pedestrian streets’ surface and the surface is heated above the snow’s melting point. These pedestrian streets are therefore always snow and ice free.
same applies to some streets / roads in Iceland.
It’s great to have tag indicating if the snow removal is frequent., less than frequent, almost seldom, seldom, very rarely.
Only one problem: What is the value add? How to measure subjective thing (just like the darn smoothness tag)?
Oh, that was 2 problems…
Having simple snow removal yes/no is usefull indicator telling that during winter time one should not expect the way to be in good condition, most likely to skip the way as route option (don’t render map containing the way/don’t create navigator data containing such ways).
I’ve now added (since it keeps snowing here, too) on nearby pedestrians ways a simple snowplowed=no/yes, and on non-plowed ways I’ve been using
seasonal:snowfall:regaintime=never/days/day/fast.
The key part of the tag and the values can be refined, if someone has a better suggestion. The idea was that people seem to avoid some ways altogether after they’ve been covered with snow (“never”), but some other ways have enough traffic to keep them in walking condition (if you’re not “old” or in high heels) no matter how bad the snowfall is (“fast”), and on them one can “expect” the snow to be stomped to a level and compacted surface within hours of snowfall (well, probably not in the middle of the night).
At few spots/nodes I also added a tag barrier:seasonal:snow=snow_pile, when it seemed to be regularly used for dumping the plowed snow.