I think there’s some confusion about what constitutes a transit mall, possibly due to imprecise language on Wikipedia. My understanding is that, in North America, a typical transit mall is an ordinary city street that has a dedicated bus lane alongside an unrestricted car lane. The bus lane may be open to bikes or taxis as an exception. The bus lane isn’t a protected lane – there’s no physical separation – so it may also allow some minor use by cars as a turn lane. Clearly such a street doesn’t qualify as a highway=busway, and the bus lane wouldn’t be mapped as a separate feature either. But if the street is completely given over to buses, it might still be named or described as a “transit mall”.
Wikipedia lists my city’s downtown transit mall as such. It consists of a one-way couplet of two-lane streets. Along both streets, one lane is open to cars, while the other is a bus lane that cars can also use as a right turn lane. The parallel light rail line and pedestrian walkways are also considered part of the transit mall. As a form of pedestrian priority, the street and light rail line have a reduced speed limit of 20 and 10 miles per hour, respectively.
To the east, we also have a dedicated busway in the median of a major street. It only allows the buses that serve the bus rapid transit line. Other buses use the main car lanes, and there’s no exception for left turns due to the physical separation:
This busway isn’t called a transit mall, because that term sort of implies low speed, by analogy with a pedestrian mall (highway=pedestrian).
A word of caution when following a link from a tagging page to a Wikipedia article: many English Wikipedia articles are named after an American English term but attempt to draw analogies worldwide, to avoid getting tagged as having a North American bias. This doesn’t necessarily mean that every example should be tagged identically just because it’s listed in the Wikipedia article. At the same time, it’s appropriate for the tagging page to link to this article, which gives a bit more background for laypeople.
I immediately recognized Princes St in your photo, I greatly enjoyed visiting Edinburgh last year! This is a nice example, thanks for bringing it up. To me, a busway should be dedicated only for buses and not allow any other motor vehicles. Princes St explicitly allows taxis, for one. Given the shops along it, I would expect it to also allow commercial loading/deliveries at some times of day, and indeed it does if Bing Streetside is to be believed, although this is not tagged on the OSM ways:
The photo is a bit blurry, but the bottom says “Loading permitted 8pm-7am”. These additional use cases for non-public transit vehicles are what makes this not a busway IMO: I think no private motor vehicle should be able to drive on one in any circumstance. As has probably been made clear in the thread, I lean toward a more restrictive definition of busway that favors dedicated rights of way where buses can attain relatively high speeds, so I have trouble imagining what a use case for highway=busway + bicycle=yes looks like. But I could believe it could exist in some edge case.
As far as I understand it, a transit mall is a street where private cars are overall prohibited and the street is well served (i.e. high frequency) by on-street PT. I think the most important distinction is the lesser pedestrian separation (particularly the lack of kerbs) and how one is able to just cross the street unlike on a “proper” busway where free crossing is overall prohibited (either only allowed at dedicated crossings or separated by stronger barriers). This is particularly true inside pedestrian zones.
Of course, part of the problem INE is that it’s also relative: A bus-only motorway (not just motorway links, of course) is a good example of a busway, protected bus lanes i.e. a bus lane which is on different carriageway (with barriers which are kerbs or stronger) also are tagged as highway=busway (the non-grade separaed BRTs), a bus-only street OTOH hasn’t got much of a way (pun unintended) to compare with the immediate surroundings.
For us Germans, it’s kind of like applying the three types of BOStrab (tramway) trackbeds to busses: Highway adjacenet (i.e. on-street), exclusive (at grade but protected) and independent (limited crossings if at all and generally protected by barriers) and highway=busway best applies to the latter two but not necessarily for the first one.
Ultimately, the main distinction is the priority: Does the infrastructure primarily serve busses (and rail) first or does it focus on other road users such as pedestrians or cyclists (e.g. as @Minh_Nguyen mentioned, do the road vehicles drive at reduced speeds on such streets)?
I see where you’re coming from, but I think this is probably unnecessarily strict, when we already tag plenty of pedestrian malls as highway=pedestrian even though they allow some limited use by motor vehicles. For example, this pedestrian mall in Cincinnati serves an open-air market; it’s strictly limited to pedestrians during market hours but allows motor vehicles to make deliveries or park during off-hours. On balance, calling it an ordinary unclassified street is a bit pedantic and misleading, since the restrictions during market hours are far from the norm for that city:
On the campus of Stanford University, many of the streets around the main quad are considered pedestrian malls, even though the vast majority of traffic is on bicycles, and some motor vehicles are allowed – specifically, the golf carts and other small electric vehicles of a university-run shuttle service that serves disabled students, students who need a safety escort at night, and anyone who needs a ride after an intense party.
It’s cases like these that help to justify the dedicated highway values. Otherwise, pedestrian malls could just be service roads that disallow motor vehicles, and busways could just be streets that exclusively allow buses, all via access tags.
I think this is correct for the most part, but if “transit mall” really is still specific to American English, then it absolutely can allow private cars. I drive down the transit mall I mentioned on a regular basis. It’s a pleasant experience if you don’t mind the lower speed limit and having to watch for pedestrians darting across. Also note that most laypeople are unfamiliar with the term; it’s mostly jargon from urban planning and transit advocacy circles.
As I understand it, the concept of a transit mall basically started with the Portland Mall in Portland, Oregon. The design prioritized public transit and tried to be as pedestrian-friendly as possible while still allowing some private motor vehicle use. It was so successful that other cities tried to emulate it. Some cities, like San José, had to water down the design and allow through traffic by car, while others have managed to prohibit car traffic entirely.
Regardless of any local quirks, the primary defining factors are improved public transit facilities (similar to BRT) and pedestrian friendliness (similar to a bus station). This distinguishes transit malls from something like San Francisco’s Market Street. Nowadays, this street also prohibits private cars except for some short maneuvers, but it’s still a monster of a street that you’d be foolish to jaywalk across, so it isn’t a transit mall. It also isn’t currently tagged as a busway, but I suspect this has more to do with how disruptive it would be to retag this street. Not only would the city’s main thoroughfare disappear from osm-carto, but it would also probably catch out a lot of routers. This happens to be the most important street in the whole world from the perspective of VC-funded mapping and autonomous driving startups, not exactly the sort of software shops that are thinking about pedestrian or transit facilities.
Thanks. Maybe we’ll need to leave the question what exactly a “transit mall” is and which streets internationally can be considered good examples to the editors of the Wikipedia page for transit malls.
But that means our OSM Wiki page could probably be a bit clearer about when not to use highway=busway.
Am I right then that highway=busway might allow cyclists, but if the street I am looking at allows taxis, and especially if it allows private motor vehicles (even if only for some of the time, for loading and unloading) then that’s a strong indicator that I am not looking at a highway=busway? Even when private cars are completely banned, we can ask ourselves whether the infrastructure primarily serves buses or whether it serves a variety of transport modes.
Yes I know but then some people above were saying that some busways do allow cyclists (see here) and therefore the “requirement” in the Wiki page that busways don’t allow cycling could be dropped.
That’s why I asked the question, when I’m looking at a road that allows buses and cyclists, how do I know if I should be tagging it as a busway or just as an ordinary road (e.g. unclassified) where private cars aren’t allowed?
If the bicycle access or taxi access is signposted as an exception to a prohibition, like “Buses Only Except Bicycles”, then it doesn’t affect the fundamental nature of the feature. On the other hand, if the sign says “Buses and Taxis Only”, then it’s less clear and we need to consider some other context beyond the immediate sign.
One exemption that can be safely considered not a problem is taxi’s, as there are countries that by default allow taxi’s to use those bus roads, even when they aren’t specifically designed for it and don’t really use them all that much because of that. A hard line on taxi usage being forbidden for it to be a busway, would mean entire countries missing out on being able to use that tag, even though they are clearly still busways and are known as such by the public and basically still function exactly the same. In fact, a whole lot of busways where historically tagged that way already, given taxi falls under the psv=yes tag that was widely used before. I think it is very difficult to put in hard guidelines of what should and what should not be tagged as busway, instead we should opt for a rule following the duck test. Does it look, feel, function as a busway, then it is one. An occasional taxi does not at all influence that. And in that example of the U of M Transitway, the infrastructure and function clearly is also still a busway. Transit malls however are maybe a different kind, if they are used by pedestrians, delivery vehicles all over the place etc, it probably starts to be more a general purpose road that only disallows private motor vehicles.
But then again, that is a very american term that is basically unheard of in non-english speaking countries, so it might need further clarification and discussion on what’s actually meant by it, and if it even makes sense at all to exclude them. It could be possible to replace it by more concrete guidelines, like e.g. does it allow general purpose traffic, is there a separate way for pedestrians, etc. as ‘transit mall’ seems to encompass way too much different types of infrastructure and just isn’t used as a term in large parts of the world.
And note that for example pedestrian areas in many cases also allow bicycles and some kinds of motor vehicles for specific purposes, yet no one questions them being tagged as pedestrian only roads with specific exceptions. I think busways should be treated exactly the same.
The most common scenarios around here are that the road signs say either
cycles, buses and taxis only, or
no entry except cycles, buses and taxis
The word busway isn’t used so the “duck test” doesn’t work.
If there’s no hard line around either taxis or bicycles being allowed, then it’s less clear me when something should in theory be a busway or something else + access tags. (Practically, until busway is rendered on the ‘main map’, of course no one is going to go and retag the city’s most well known street to busway)
In any case, it should be possible to improve the section of the Wiki that says “don’t use highway=busway for transit malls” based on this discussion I’ll try to come up with a better phrasing and put it up for discussion here.
It also looks like there are some differences between countries so maybe it’s easier to get consensus in the local community on this question than globally.
In that case, I’ve chosen highway=busway because the infrastructure serves primarily busses (bus=designated, DE:245, incidentally mirroring Tjuro’s post above) and bicycles and taxis are merely permitted on them (bicycle/taxi=yes, “Fahrrad u. Taxi frei”), alongside being relative to the highway’s main carriageway, not to mention there is no need for a pedestrian to cross the street there in any way either.
Compare that to Münsterplatz (which is more of transit malls) and not only is it part of a larger street (which does permit other vehicles if only partially) but vehicular access is controlled using No Entry and plenty of pedestrians cross the street as well, making it feel less like busway and more of a street where only busses/trams are permitted.
An even more straightforward example is Ludwigsstraße further east which right in the middle of a pedestrian zone (complete with the lack of kerbs) which disqualifies it from being a busway.
Another thought, these car-free, public transport-dominated city centre streets that I have in mind tend to have a lot of shops, restaurants, hotels and other amenities on them. Am I right that most highway=busways do not, so this could be used as another criterion when trying to explain what is or isn’t a busway? Again, not a hard line, but one of many things to consider.
These are access restriction signs, which will always present us with tricky edge cases because the system is relatively flexible. As I see it, highway=busway is about infrastructure intended for a particular purpose, perhaps built to a certain norm, however the signs accomplish that goal. These signs become a rule of thumb but don’t tell the whole story.
I suspect this concept is somewhat foreign to mappers used to signage standards that tell you everything you need to know about a given thoroughfare. We’ve encountered the same challenge with other infrastructure design concepts like American-style expressways (expressway=yes) and bike boulevards (no established tagging but very much desired). We would have the same problem with European-style cyclestreets, living streets, and motorway imitations (motorroad=yes) if not for the tendency to post signs that announce the design concept.[1]
We handwave about motorroad=yes being about access restrictions, like the official sign, but just look at all the other things this page says it implies in various countries. ↩︎
I’ve tried to rephrase the confusing line about transit malls.
Right now the Wiki page says, in a section about what not to tag as highway=busway:
Transit malls
Also often referred to as a busway, a transit mall is a street, or set of streets, in a city or town along which automobile traffic is prohibited or greatly restricted and only public transit vehicles, bicycles, and pedestrians are permitted. These types of roads may experience high levels of conflict between pedestrian/bike traffic, and bus traffic.
Would something like the following work?
Car-free streets
In some streets, private motor vehicles are banned without the street being fully pedestrianised (link to highway=pedestrian). As a result, the street may be dominated by buses and other forms of public transport, but that alone does not make it a highway=busway. (A related concept is transit malls - link to Wikipedia)
The main question to consider is whether the infrastructure is primarily designed for buses or serves a wide range of road users. Criteria include: Are cyclists allowed? Are taxis allowed? Are certain private motor vehicles allowed, at least at certain times of day e.g. for loading and unloading? Are there local businesses (e.g. cafés, restaurants, shops) and/or residential buildings along the street, that the street gives access to? Are there frequent cross streets and traffic lights that require buses to stop, slowing down journey times?
If the answer to many of the above questions is yes, then you are probably not looking at a busway, but at a normal street where access tags such as motor_vehicle=no should be used.
I am ressurecting this thread as I think there is still a lot to do regarding highway=busway.
Dropping the BRT requirement was worthy, but it does not solve the issue of highway=busway being used in two contradictory ways.
This is a great point. Highway=busway now has two meanings:
Either as any road open for buses (like in the Netherlands, but cursorily looking around overpass, this is actually widespread in most of the world). This is good for routers (they know they should not send drivers or cyclists that way).
The other way is resvering this tag only for major pieces of public transport infrastructure. This would be great for renderes, as they could display busways when zoomed out (similar like metro lines are usually highlighted on non-car-centric maps). However, due to the confusion, renderes now only know a busway is some kind of road. It is closed to cars but its importance is unknown.
The wiki as of now does not communicate well what the tag is used for. I do not blame people who do not read down to “similar infrastructure”. The wiki should be a bit more clear and better structured so the current distinction according to the original proposal is more prominent.
The definiton now is “A dedicated, separate roadway for buses.” It should be “A dedicated, separate roadway for buses that has city=wide importance/maintains a high level of importance specifically for bus passengers.”
Then, the starting text should be shorter and should mention that there are a lot of things this tag should not be used for. In How to map, the cases that are not to be mapped with highway=busway should be listed instead of deep down in the article. Somewhere, it should be noted that as of now, the tag is not consistent.
However, I am not sure if this would solve the issue. It is hard for mappers to distinguish what should be highway=busway and not, the definition is not simple. (Busway as a way designated for buses would be much simpler).
Which brings me to another great post:
Would it not be in accordance with this to redefine highway=busway as any road that is solely meant to be used by buses and then add a new tag brt=yes/no (default no) to bus route relations which would allow interested renderers to display such relations more prominently? Of course, this would need a new proposal.
It still seems to me that we are overcomplicating things here.
I agree with the suggestions that BRTs are probably better specified at the route relation level, rather than at the way level.
I also think that using busway for any bus-only road seems fine, though perhaps not for minor service roads.
In any case, I think it would be appropriate to take a step back:
What problem are we trying to solve?
If we can’t identify a specific problem that needs solving, then just let mappers use this tag as it seems appropriate in their region, and document the common consensus for its usage.
“Bus rapid transit” refers to a level of service, while the type of infrastructure designed for that service is traditionally called a “busway” in English. Thanks to the generosity of governments toward public transportation services (I kid), the two only sometimes align. Levels of service should definitely be confined to a route relation, but the mere fact that a BRT line has to travel over a standard public street doesn’t turn that street into a busway.
For example:
Alum Rock Avenue’s busway is used exclusively by Route 522, which is considered “bus rapid transit”, but busways make up only 5% of the route’s total distance. The rest is ordinary streets, along which the bus gets no signal priority. The only other BRT infrastructure is some fancier bus shelters along another 5% of the route.
In other words, moving this information to a route relation tag would be similar to replacing highway=cycleway with route=bicycle.
I’ll try to come up with a better phrasing and put it up for discussion here.
