There are several of these patches of asphalt next to the path in my local park, I’m unsure of their purpose. I wondered if anyone knew, and if they had a specific tagging. I guess I could just tag the width of the path and make that section slightly wider, not sure if there’s something more specific though.
One possibility is a place for slower pedestrians or cyclists to wait for faster traffic to pass (or rest or tie one’s shoes without obstructing the path). You can tag that as highway=passing_place. That tag is normally for turnouts along roads, but highway=turning_circle also occurs on paths, so this probably wouldn’t be unreasonable.
Another possibility would be a spot where there was or will be a bench, or a stub where a trail connection is planned, but that would be speculative without knowing more about the path.
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=passing_place is usually used for lanes=1 , whereas there’s lanes=2 for overtaking here already, so to speak. I’m thinking they are often for resting, akin to a parking=layby for bikes.
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@Minh_Nguyen @Kovoschiz Thanks for the tagging suggestions. I think I’ll try asking my parks and rec department to see if they had a specific intent with these, but =passing_place or =layby both seem reasonable for this. The path wasn’t always painted to indicate two lanes, and these paved sections pre-date the paint markings, so a passing place could have been the original intention. It’s also likely/possible that these are here prospectively for more benches. Although given the frequency and locations of them, I don’t think it’s likely that they’re here for trail extensions.
I’ll just hold off on tagging them for now, at least until/unless I hear back from the city parks and rec department.
What about option “do not map these”?
This looks like planned positions to attach future footways/cycleway or to place benches or other street furniture.
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Either that, or places were benches once were, before vandals set fire to them or the landowner overreacted in 2020, which might be razed:amenity=bench nodes if traces of the attachment points remain.
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From photos it seems exceedingly unlikely that these would be mistakenly mapped as benches and at least in relatively high-quality photos I see no traces of benches, so razed:amenity=bench seems not really correct here.
(these impressions would be obviously overcome by actual on-the ground survey)
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From several detailed on the ground surveys of this location, there is no visible evidence of benches previously being here, and from (obviously less reliable because it’s from memory) my knowledge of visiting this location over the course of more than a decade, there never has been benches here.
This is what it looks like to me - planned spots for new paths, benches, or viewpoints / information boards.
Well, that’s always an option, but I guess there should be a way to map them - I’d go with a perpendicular footway with a noexit=yes node at the end.