How to tag narrow bamboo bridge?

How to tag narrow bamboo bridge?
They are not called bridge in my country, rather called ‘shako’, (সাঁকো)।

Example Photo:

This is what I did:

bridge=yes
foot=yes
bicycle=no
vehicle=no
motor_vehicle=no
highway=residential
surface=bamboo (wood? But this is not wood)
  • Can I use bamboo as surface?
  • Should I remove or keep the highway=residential tag? It is along with a residential road.
  • What would be the bridge structure?
    Should I add width=, typically they are 1 or 2 bamboo, may be be 5 or 7 inch width total.
1 Like

Looked it up a while ago and to my surprise bamboo belongs to the family of grasses.

Is bamboo related to grass?

Bamboos are a diverse group of mostly evergreen perennial flowering plants making up the subfamily Bambusoideae of the grass family Poaceae.

As for the bridge, I’d tag it as highway=footway which automatically excludes all vehicles.

surface=bamboo has a few uses in TagInfo but I’d omit that and say material or bridge:material=bamboo

4 Likes

As for the bridge, I’d tag it as highway=footway which automatically excludes all vehicles.

+1, if all vehicles are excluded it cannot be a highway=residential

3 Likes

In addition to other answers, note that bridge=* can have more detailed values then yes. In this particular case, it is even smaller than bridge=boardwalk, so maybe something like bridge=simple_brunnel (according to its picture at least; I have no idea what “simple brunnel” means - would someone like to improve that wiki page? :smile: ) ? There is also close (but yet undocumented) bridge=log_bridge.

Or better yet invent & document new value if someone can suggest good English name (“shako” means something completely different in English) - this certainly looks like a case that is much rarer in western-european which has (so far) been predominant in inventing tags.

(While you can also use man_made=bridge for bridge outline and its additional attributes like bridge:structure=* or bridge:support=*, I personally probably wouldn’t bother, unless I were really interested in bridges).

1 Like

That tag is utter garbage and that page should be expunged from the wiki!

The history is of the word is that “brunnel” is/was sometimes used to describe large combined bridge / tunnel schemes. Many years ago, it was used a bit in the press to describe the various English Channel / La Manche crossing schemes before the Channel Tunnel was built. It’s fallen out of use so much that a web search can’t see it for all the mispellings of (IK) “Brunel”.

Someone saw it and created “simple_brunnel” on the OSM wiki. My recollection is that it was designed to remove validation warnings where a highway such as a path crosses a waterway such as a stream, and (a) they couldn’t tell whether it was a bridge, ford or tunnel from the imagery and (b) they could not be bothered to go and survey.

In this case a bamboo bridge is clearly a bridge - get over it. After that, I’d do what @Matija_Nalis suggested above - either use a new descriptive word (but not one misused elsewhere) just just tag structure, width, etc. etc.

3 Likes

You want to add bike=yes if it allow bicycles and larger tricycle like vehicles.

Hi জাবির and welcome to the forum!

Sounds good to me. I would not favour to tag such linear objects as man_made=bridge, but

highway=footway
bridge=yes
layer=1
bridge:material=bamboo
width=*
(bicycle=yes in case the bridge would allow to pass with a bicycle which is not the case in the 2 sample pics unless you shoulder your bike and try your luck)

1 Like

Sorry for the late, my internet package was ended after committing the changeset.

Thanks Everyone for the great infos.

I tagged it as SekeRob suggested. tagging it as footway, which excludes all vehicles (didn’t know that). In reality, there is not much restrictions in my country, except very few roads in city. The rule is, if the road fits the vehicle, then it can go, whatever type the road is :grin:. Only In this bamboo bridge case, it is too narrow (only 2 parallel bamboo) to go even a bicycle.

removed other vehicle=no etc tags, added those before so no routing engine routs through this except by feet; and set bridge:material=bamboo

bridge=yes
highway=footway
bridge:material=bamboo
width=0.25 (think it's narrower than that)
~

There is a wide bamboo bridge I know which is wide but bicycle not allowed through riding (not possible actually), but you can carry easily without riding/paddeling or on shoulder. You have to pay to pass the bridge though.

but you can carry easily without riding/paddeling or on shoulder. You have to pay to pass the bridge though. Should I tag bicycle=yes for that?

I would suggest bicycle=dismount and fee=yes for this

3 Likes

Thanks. I’ve added {{Question}} template and Talk page for now; feel free to improve on it.
Any suggestion what might be good bridge=* value to use in English for that type of bridge?

Umm, if one looks at initial post pictures (yeah, they’re probably not displaying inline due to this problem, but one can still click on them to display them), I’d say it is highly unlikely that anyone could drive bicycle on them (except maybe trained acrobats?), much less tricycles…

So maybe bicycle=dismount if one can carry a bike over on their shoulders?

+1 for the bicycle=dismount

toll=* would be better I think in this case. It can be excluded while routing, ie: osmand routing.

3 Likes

the bridge is like the pictures I linked, no bicycle is possible, even carrying a bag is hard. One or sometimes both two hands must be free to hold the bamboo handrail. You have one bamboo, or two in parallel to put your feet on.

But this types of bamboo bridge can carry a bicycle, wide:

https://commons.m.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Bamboo_Bridge_at_Rampura,_Dhaka.jpg

Eventually they turn into concrete bridge oneday, if the road is important.

so suggesting new bridge=bomboo_bridge instead of bridge=yes?

so suggesting new bridge=bomboo_bridge instead of bridge=yes?

bridge=yes
bridge:structure=simple-suspension
material=bamboo

https://taginfo.openstreetmap.org/tags/bridge%3Astructure=simple-suspension#overview

beam fits well I think.

No, I’m suggesting bridge=something where something may be a new value, and probably won’t be, and perhaps bridge:material=bamboo. The material key is more used, but is a general key. I suspect bridge:material is more used on bridges.

1 Like

and perhaps bridge:material=bamboo. The material key is more used, but is a general key. I suspect bridge:material is more used on bridges

I looked it up, material is used more frequently: the bridge:material tag is used only 1460 times in total

https://taginfo.openstreetmap.org/keys/bridge%3Amaterial#overview

but there are more than 2000 material=* on objects with bridge:structure=beam https://taginfo.openstreetmap.org/tags/bridge%3Astructure=beam#combinations

also 8600 material on bridge=* objects
https://taginfo.openstreetmap.org/keys/bridge#combinations

We are rather deficient in tags for footbridges of various kinds.

It’s quite easy to encounter a wide variety on a country walk in England, let alone elsewhere. This may be a suitable subject for a separate thread, but for now I have quickly added some of the kinds I see to this thread:

5 Likes