Multiple Barriers at a node

General talk
1

What do you do when a barrier has multiple personalities?

Often I see a ‘squeeze’ for foot and bicycle traffic next to a locked gate used by official government vehicles.

Last weekend I came across a triple barrier

  1. locked vehicle gate - for park vehicles, fire and ambulance
  2. foot and bicycle squeeze - for pedestrians and cyclists
  3. series of step over logs - for horses

All this is to allow access to each of these groups but prevent cars and motorcycles from entering the park.

If I mark it as only one of the three options then it is doing a disservice to the other two groups who would need to know access/exit options.

Is the best option to not mark the barrier at all, since anyone who needs access will have it?

2

IMO it is worth marking something, as a general warning to cyclists etc that they might need to slow down, plus it may be a useful feature for navigation.

Simplest would be just to add barrier=gate tag, plus the appropriate access tags, ie foot=yes, bicycle=yes, horse=yes, motorcar=no, motorcycle=no
Then its clear who is able/allowed to pass through it.

Or if you wanted to map each barrier, you could split the way into several adjacent ways at that point, with a different barrier on each.

There’s a few tracks around here that have (usually locked) gates on them, with kissing gates alongside. I’ve just mapped them as barrier=gate, plus the access tags.
There’s also some cattle grids with a track and a gate alongside for animals etc, I think they would be worth mapping separately, though I’ve not done any yet.

3

I agree with Vclaw. Where I’ve come across 2 gates next to each other I also usually tag a single node as barrier=gate and then put various access tags.