Ways set as "access: destination"

Hello,

Quick intro since this is my first post : My startup, stoomlink.com got acquired by the 4 transport operators in Belgium (TEC, DeLijn, MIVB-STIB and NMBS-SNCB). We have a tons of awesome projects in the work, some of them using data from OpenStreetMap. So expect more from me around here :slight_smile:

We have a very specific question about the usage of the tag : “access: destination”.
https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Tag:access=destination?uselang=en

According to the docs (IIRC), it should be used only when applied to all mean of transportation.
But in Belgium, it seems to be used instead of the more precise motor_vehicle=destinationon all roads reserved to “excepté circulation locale / uitgezonderd plaatselijk verkeer”

Out of the box, route planner like open-trip-planner will follow access: destinationfor pedestrian too, which brings some very strange result like these:

Because OTP is avoiding ways with the tag, even for pedestrian.
(https://www.openstreetmap.org/way/172262244#map=18/50.41929/6.03032&layers=D)

What should be done?
Shoud all tags “access: destination” be replaced by “motor_vehicle=destination” ?

Thanks for reading,

— Thomas

Hi Thomas, welcome to the club :slight_smile:
More people hang out on our chat room on Element/Matrix. I’ll share your post there, but do feel free to jump in there with this topic.

On topic: yes, access=destination without extra tags is usually wrong in Belgium. But access tagging is hierarchical, so you could have access=destination + bicycle=yes. Which is still wrong of course. I myself use vehicle=destination + bicycle=yes most of the time, though strictly speaking we do have a rule that is more exact, see https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Road_signs_in_Belgium/C_Prohibitory_signs

That said, some routing planners do ignore the access=destination (if no more detailed info provided) if on foot or bike. I tested in OsmAnd. And putting access=destination puts such a nice little rendering on the osm.org map :slight_smile:

But yeah, it would be better to put more exact tags on the roads. A bulk operation might be considered (after much more discussion). My first thought is that not all cases of access=destination are based on a traffic sign C3+uitgezonderd plaatselijk verkeer. So it would be best to manually review all of them to make sure (as much as possible) that the correction is indeed correct. While that might sound a little crazy, it is actually doable if you can enthuse a few community members and put these cases in MapRoulette as microtasks.

EDIT: fixed bicycle=no to bicycle=yes

Some mappers apparently use vehicle=destination instead because that would logically bar vehicles which are not motor vehicles but are still prohibited to use the street because of that C3 sign, such as hand carts or horse carriages. Doing this requires a complicated “vehicle=destination + bicycle=yes + horse=yes” combination.

“motor_vehicle=destination” is probably more reasonable.

Whatever we decide, setting a common standard within the country will definitely help a lot.

@Thomas, I think you can customise the trip planner to ignore some tags, i.e. your profile for pedestrians could be set to honour access=no and access=private and consider every other value as “yes”.

The easiest way to tag those roads is using the ‘Plug-in Road Sign’ in JOSM, where you can select the road signs.
For the moment selecting Road sign C3 and the extra sign to permit local traffic automatically gives the tags:
bicycle = yes
bus = yes
emergency = yes
horse = yes
traffic_sign = BE:C3,BE:Type_IV_local_traffic_nl
vehicle = destination