Hey everyone, I was looking at expanding my truck stop showcase to NL. This is highway=services + hgv=designated or hgv=yes. There is some great motorway services data here, however there is almost no use of hgv on them in NL. Locations like this seem fairly evident from aerial imagery but are lacking the access tag on the parking, fuel station and motorway services.
There is also a small number of fuel stations tagged as highway=services where there are probably better as landuse=retail however this really rare, the data here is way better than most countries. Be proud.
I guess I’m asking if hgv is missing because of a lack of interest, or by design. Has NL decided that hgv=yes is an assumed default on highway=services?
Is that ever not the case? highway=services implies a large rest area along a trunk road or motorway. Not sure why or when lorries wouldn’t be allowed or facilitated there.
In the Netherlands a service area (verzorgingsplaats) can generally be used by trucks. We don’t add access tags to highway=services, but we add them to the individual parts of the service area, like hgv=designated on parking areas for trucks and hgv=no on ways and parking areas on which trucks are not allowed. I don’t see the added value to add hgv=yes to all instances of highway=services or highway=rest area.
About the local fuel stations with highway=services, I think they match the definition of a service area: a fuel station, shop, some parking spots, maybe a trailer rental or electric charging. A small service area is still a service area.
I added the hgv requirement to partially to filter out bad data in OSM, eg single petrol stations and otherrandomstuff. It works really well in CA, GB and US, where hgv is explicitly tagged.
Buc-ee’s is the prime example of motorway services that don’t allow trucks, but do allow cars. They can be tagged as hgv=no though.
The example I used is missing hgv on all features, but it may be chance.
Not really according to the comment above or the wiki, can’t really rest or eat in something in that example.
Service area (also known as travel plaza, rest and service area, service station, truck stop) are places along a road, usually a motorway or dual carriageway, where drivers can stop to refuel or charge their vehicles, have a rest or take refreshments. They usually consist of, at minimum, a petrol station, parking facilities, a place to eat and some public toilets.
It may be a bad example from me anyway, it looks like it was incorrectly changed from highway=service to highway=services, like I said, NL is really good on this data.
No default is assumed, indicated or proposed on the wiki, AFAIK. I suspect a European data user would assume hgv=yes on the ways and areas, unless hgv=no is specified.
According to the website, there is capacity for trucks now. I’m not familiar with this topic or with the place, so if someone can verify this, that’d be nice.
So it doesn’t seem like this is necessary in the Netherlands. Data consumers probably should consider hgv=yes the default. For quality assurance simply ignoring countries like the Netherlands (this will be true in a few other countries where motorroads are highly segregated and regulated) should be fine.
Service area (also known as travel plaza, rest and service area, service station, truck stop) are places along a road, usually a motorway or dual carriageway, where drivers can stop to refuel or charge their vehicles, have a rest or take refreshments.
Random fuel stations do not seem to fall under highway=services, unless they were tagged incorrectly. Aren’t all highway=services in the Netherlands typically suitable for lorries, unless this is specifically indicated otherwise?
A very high percentage here have n automated car wash, a lot these days have parcel lockers of BRT, Inpost, Amazon, of course a coffee bar, often a place to do car repair, so the whole is, yes a service station, the suffixed S added so the system can distinct between a road and an area, without that ending s you get presented with a road loop. In short, you’d have trouble finding here a fuel station who’s area would just be ‘retail’.
Of course we could also tag area:highway=service but few would do that as it would not render on Carto.
PS, know only 1 Station in the whole region that have a hgv=no sign, some stations have maxheight sign when lower than standard roof, but then they have a GTL lane.
Then have a look at the largest truck stop in NL. Pretty detailed mapping, but highway=services seems to be missing which seems to be a common theme on the samples below as well.
Some smaller truck stops with some additional services:
And then there’s some very small lonely fuel stations only for trucks with no other services:
