Let’s support the Bulgarian OSM community
Posted by Piotr Strębski on May 31, 2024 in Polish (Polish).
Bulgaria is a country in southern Europe, bordering the Balkans and Asia Minor (Turkey). It is almost 3 times smaller than Poland in terms of territory, and almost 6 times smaller in terms of population; in the size of the OpenStreetMap community - almost 10 times smaller than the community devoting its time to Poland! All this means that even in the case of the largest cities in Bulgaria, it is easy to notice “white spots” that should be filled with buildings, sidewalks, car parks, etc., not to mention spatial development areas such as forests, farmlands, water reservoirs, etc.
Bulgaria is also - due to the Black Sea and the Mountains of the Balkan Peninsula, warm Mediterranean climate, tasty cuisine (Slavic-Balkan, with the influence of Turkish cuisine) and affordable prices (lower than in Poland) - a great place for tourism and relaxation (I am writing this all from my own experience).
Unfortunately, there are no good quality sources for mapping Bulgaria - you have to stick to the difficult-to-access cadastre data (https://kais.cadastre.bg/) and Esri satellite images. But both of them, combined with the local Bulgarian community, which - thanks to tools such as StreetComplete, Every Door or the editor in OsmAnd - can “bottom-up” complete details unknown to us from the desk, often hundreds or thousands of kilometers from Bulgaria - constitute a sufficient set to support OpenStreetMap In Bulgaria. The help of the Bulgarian community will be reciprocated a hundredfold when visiting this underrated tourist country.
I love in Sofia, Bulgaria and it’s great to see people interested in taking part in this beautiful project. I, myself, only recently discovered that I can contribute to it it and have been using StreetComplete to fill in missing information while moving around in the city and also the website to add missing buildings and areas in more remote regions. It’s pretty fun and rewarding in a way. Still haven’t discovered an active community to discuss stuff with here, tho.
Haven’t been to the southern parts since I got the StreetComplete app a couple of days ago, so I haven’t noticed. Although I am active mostly in the eastern and the western parts myself.
In most places there is an almost overwhelming amount of quests, but doing a few here and there slowly chips them away.
Btw, I have a question: There is a Lidl close to my neighbourhood and the details for its car park weren’t specified, so I went ahead and started sorting them out. So, there is free parking for 90 minutes and afterwards it is 3 BGN per started hour and I’m not really sure how to map it correctly. I tried my best to do it as correctly as possible, but I still left a note, because I’m pretty sure I did it wrong… (I marked it as “free parking for a limited time (90 mins)”, and put the working hours as the time window in which it is valid, through StreetComplete) Here is the changeset: Changeset: 152817900
I would appreciate any advice when it comes to how to map such more specific parking rules.
If it’s a typical Lidl parking in Bulgaria, it’s even more complicated, but very simple in practice. The 90 free minutes are only for Lidl customers, others pay from the start. But in practice the entry barriers don’t work so it’s actually free for all. I’m a practical (and lazy) person so I just tag them with fee=no
In practice, it depends on the location. There are some Lidl’s (which are in more remote locations) that keep their parking barriers open, or don’t have ones, (these are the ones you are familiar with, I suppose) while ones in the more central parts of the city (where its difficult to find a place to park, have working parking systems and operate pretty strictly by the rules. (all people are considered customers and have free 90 mins of parking. If you go over that you have to go to a register in the store and pay the fee (started hours x 3 BGN) after which you will be able to use your ticket to leave the parking lot. Obviously you can’t pay it if the store is closed)
This seems to be the case in the ones I have frequented. (6-7 or so)
I think that only Lidl customers can stay free for 90 minutes can be tagged as fee:conditional=no @ stay < 90 minutes AND Lidl customers (if I understood Conditional restrictions - OpenStreetMap Wiki correctly)
IMO, used current tags on Way: 504459780 | OpenStreetMap are fine. But - who will control actuality (in OSM data) of price level? To avoid falling into the trap of “too accurate” tagging, which we will not be able to control and update.
In Poland, under Lidl stores there are “Regulations for using the parking lot”, the content states that it is “available to customers of Lidl stores”, and they are also not charged for 90 minutes, provided that they leave a ticket with the printed parking time.
It is parking intended only for customers, but as @lqlqlqlio said, in reality that cannot be controlled since the barriers are automatic. For example if you go in and leave your car there for 60 minutes and then take it back, the system can’t verify if you have or haven’t purchased anything in the store.
I updated them after getting some input here (you can check past versions). As for the actuality of the information, maybe I can add “last updated” tag, so that there could be an indication, say 10 or 20 years in the future that the information might be outdated?
In Poland Lidl’s parking are managed by Apcoa company, with “Apcoa control” (so the “system” is also manual, by Apcoa employees, and parking fees are real issue for a lot of drivers). But it can be different in Bulgaria, so my words are just “experience sharing” with such objects
In some Billa’s, you can’t get out of the parking lot without validating your parking ticket at the checkout. Of course, that’s only for shops in the central parts. If it’s in Dolno Nanagornishte, you can (probably) park 24/7.
It’s super interesting hearing how things operate differently in different places.
In Lidl’s here (Bulgaria) things are made as efficient (profitable) as possible, or in other words, if something can run with less or no additional employees it certainly will. Hence the unmanned parking lot exits. (I might take some pictures some day to share how they look).
That Billa thing must be something new, when I was driving more regularly a couple of years ago, I hadn’t seen that anywhere.
Also that Dolno Nanagornishte really threw me off (hadn’t heard it in a while + it is slightly funny), I had almost forgotten that some people here are Bulgarian.
and for OSM development in your country.
