I’m travelling thru US now and I notices one suspicious thing I’d like to clarify community opinion on.
What we know is that there are National Parks (and other parks and NPS areas, in this matter) around the country which require fee or Annual Pass to enter. There are usually some toll_booth or other type of entrance kiosks where one can pay a fee and/or show the pass. Though the territory of the park is huge.
Problem statement - what I saw in multiple parks already is that some roads or parking lots in the park are mapped with access=customers. That makes absolutely zero sense to me - all park area is already “access=customers” by definition and by presence of toll booth (or other access controls at the entrances). It doesn’t help anyone to map every single parking lot in the park with access=customers, moreover, it creates two new issues:
Just visual garbage on the map that displays access tags somehow (e.g. Elevate theme for Openandromaps: such areas are shown with blue crosses)
Unable to differentiate with truly customer-only parking lots inside the park (e.g. parking lot of the restaurant which happens to be located inside the park, and its parking lot for customers of the restaurant only, not for customers of the national park)
Is there a community consensus on this topic? Do you agree access=customers should NOT be used to tag every single road and parking lot inside such parks?
Yeah that’s kind of weird. I wouldn’t think of a National Park visitor as a customer any more than a driver on a toll road. I’d think fee=yes on the boundary should cover the fact there’s an entrance fee. Applying an access tag to every feature within the park seems excessive.
In general, I agree that parking areas within national parks should not have an access tag. But there are some exceptions: Often the lodging, run by concessionaires, has dedicated parking and might be reserved for people staying at those lodges. That said, I don’t recall any signage or other indication that the parking near lodges in Yosemite, Death Valley, Grand Teton, Yellowstone, or Mt Rainier was reserved for lodge guests as of the last time I visited those locations.
One short discussion about =customers vs fee=yes vs toll=yes on highway= roads inside leisure= parks + fee=yes feature (there should be another one about the larger =theme_park ) Slack
I would think it’s necessary on highways to avoid through-routing or at least make clear that if you take that route you need to pay. Just tagging the area won’t help the routers.
For instance Mt. Rainer NP, where you might want to take NF52
That’s true, but I think toll road tagging is probably a closer equivalent than access tagging. It’s a bit of a different situation than a typical toll road since you just pay once to get into the park and then can go travel anywhere within the park for 7 days[1]. You can also leave and re-enter the park without paying a second time and annual passes can cover multiple parks for a one time fee. We don’t really think of roads through National Parks as toll roads since you’re paying for access to the park in general not just the road specifically. Still I think they are closer to toll roads than restricted access roads. Just like a toll road, anyone who pays the fee can drive right through. Park entrances appear to be commonly tagged as toll booths already.
I’m also noting similarities with how congestion pricing zones in cities work (London, New York). Even though a toll is required for motor vehicles entering those zones (depending on the time of day), I don’t think we want to tag every road within them with to reflect this.
I’ve encountered similar questions when mapping state parks, where there is often an area for day use and an area that’s restricted to people with a campsite. Currently, the places I’ve mapped largely don’t distinguish between the two (and largely don’t use access= at all, mostly just fee=yes if anything), but it feels like the sort of thing we’d want to map eventually.
Adding fee=yes to features in parks (beaches, picnic areas, parking, highways) makes some sense, since not all of a park may be in the fee area. For one park I’ve mapped, the On the other hand, it would be useful to be able to map “your park entrance fee allows you on the beach, but the bathrooms are extra”.
Overall with the concept @ezekielf mentioned that would be possible. Those areas could be MP-relations and support all kind of separations.
Though it feels a bit like tagging a fare structure in a venue. Like with ticket A you can go to those rows in the cinema and with ticket B you need to go to those.