How do you use traffic_intervention=school_street

Communities United Kingdom
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Hello UK Community,

I am from Austria. I recently found the tag traffic_intervention=school_street which is mainly used in the UK.

In Austria we also have “Schulstraßen”, which temporarily make a street to sort of a pedestrian zone. We even have a special sign for it. We discussed how to tag this here. And now we think about adding this very tag to all those streets, but we are not sure when to use it.

Unfortunately the wiki definition is not quite clear. My question to you is: When do you (not) use it?

  1. Street is closed to motorized traffic at school times
  2. Street has a special speed limit at school times (I think you often have “20 mph if flashing lights”)
  3. Some traffic calming elements in front of schools
  4. Former streets in front of schools which got closed (made a footway) permanently to give children space and safety.
  5. any other examples
2

I think the intention in the UK is to use the tag for 1, based on an (unofficial) campaign that’s gained some traction with Government: School Streets. You could possibly also apply it to 2, though I’m not sure that would be referred to as a “School Street” in the UK.

I think 3 would simply be traffic_intervention=traffic_calming while 4 you’d just take as highway=pedestrian or whatever it currently is.

In all cases though, I think the traffic_intervention=* is intended to show the reasoning / purpose behind any changes to the road, and those changes should also be tagged explicitly in OSM. e.g. for a temporary School Street closure, you’d also have something like motor_vehicle:conditional = private @ Mo-Fr 08:30-09:15.

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