Because I’m awful at keeping the forward and backward direction straight when mapping road lanes and widths, I just some JOSM map paint styles to help me visualize what I’m mapping as 2-dimensional objects as opposed to 1d ways. The simple act of being able to visualize what I’m mapping has caused me to fundamentally question how we map non-traversal spaces.
This then flowed into thoughts about what we count and don’t count as “traffic lanes” and how rethinking what counts and how we handle barriers and/or buffer space could allow for greater consistency and maybe even better routing.
A lot more visual and deep dive in the diary entry linked below. Feel free to come back and discuss and share thoughts and feedback once you visualize the same things I have been both in OSM and in IRL.
Personally I both agree but also disagree here, I personally would like lane based tagging for sections of “lanes” and more generally buffer spaces between directions of travel on bidirectional roads. I start to disagree when this is applies to actually dual carriageway roads. As I see it if there is any kind of barrier (including kerbs) between directions of travel that makes the individual carriageways different areas and thus those different areas should be represented as different ways. So in essence I would like tagging for this but only have it used if the separator is purely made of paint (paint lines on roads), once there is an actual barrier between the carriageways should be split.
I think the ‘nuance’ is centered around when does at ‘dual carriageway’ road cease to become a ‘dual carriageway’ and become just a road with occasional traffic islands. I think it’s easy to say on the extremes." I know one when I see one, but there is certainly a “grey/gray area” that straddles the lines and just like there are a few distinct ways to map a traffic light that vary in detail I think there can be room to give some deference in the “how” something is mapped and honestly from a routing perspective both ways give the same detail about where to get in turn lane and where to trun as their counterpart.
personally, from how I see it, if there is a kerb or any other barrier (other then purely paint lines) there are different areas and thus there should be different ways. So if there is a barrier between different parts of a road then that road should be split into one or more ways.