Mapping barrier=border_control as a way

Today what I see in the wiki for border_control is that it’s only supposed to be used on nodes.

However this does not fit well with reality when border control facility is better depicted as a way and/or area. Some examples might include indoor-mapping in airports or such where border controls often consist of dozen of passport control booths and has length comparable with width of the building. Some other example is the building which represents the control itself (when there are multiple lanes for vehicles like here overpass turbo or overpass turbo). Here it’s just used more consistently rather than “officially suggested” government=border_control (just 199 usages)

And there are already more than 1000 of used of it as a way (taginfo). And recently OpenAndroMaps have implemented a change adding/including/showing border_control as a way too (link, see part “from 4 August 2024”)

So my question is - can/should I go ahead and modify the wiki accordingly stating that usage on ways is also acceptable? What is required to check/ask/make sure it’s also rendered in OSM Carto default style?

The “Used on these elements” part of wiki pages is often wrong** - as you’ve said it’s often used on ways. I’m one of the consumers of that tag and should handle it in some way for for points, linear features and areas.

** in fact, the concept of that graphic is just rubbish - ways in OSM can be either linear or area features, and that graphic doesn’t indicate which a feature can sensibly be used for. Similarly, relations can be either areas or “random collections” - again that graphic doesn’t indicate which.

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The wiki for amenity=ticket_validator mentions using a way to represent a row of ticket validators. Analogously it would make sense to allow barrier=border_control on a way for a row of passport control booths. (If you don’t want to bother micromapping every individual lane.)

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Ok, that makes sense, so I’ve gone ahead and modified the wiki page accordingly.

and that field is for linear way, for area ways (and multipolygons) there is area marker

(though in my opinion this field in infobox is a confusing waste of time and would be better to eliminate it)

I’d vote for that - do you feel like “being bold” :slight_smile:

not really :slight_smile: First I would want to finish/cleanup some of projects where I acted this way.

But I would support anyone doing or proposing this.

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