I agree with this assessment. service=parking_aisle is often overused by mappers unfamiliar with the term “parking aisle”, who assume it means any road associated with a parking lot. service=driveway is overused especially by mappers in some parts of the U.S., where that word means any service road without a more specific description. This causes problems for both renderers (which cannot reliably filter out parking aisles and driveways without fragmenting the road network) and routers (which cannot reliably avoid using parking aisles and driveways as cut-throughs).
Compounding the problem, English has no word for parking lot entrances and exits or for the main circulatory roads around and through a parking lot, other than these unwieldy circumlocutions or worse. This ontological gap has precluded new service=* values and presets that would help mappers classify service roads more accurately.
I appreciate that these notes raise awareness of the problem and make it easy to spot-check for places where the mistagging is prevalent. For that reason, I would support the proposed challenge, even if it results in some perfunctory usage of bus=yes. I also think we should be open, within reason, to accommodating the needs of specialized editors like Relatify, which enables mere mortals to map public transportation routes. The one or two JOSM power users who’ve been tending to bus routes across the country simply haven’t been able to keep up with all the “transit death spirals” playing out in each city.
That said, I think it would be worth investigating a more direct way to detect mistagging and other issues. For example, if a bus route enters a parking lot, loops around it, and leaves it without stopping anywhere, there may be a missing highway=bus_stop or public_transport=stop_position, regardless of road classification.
More broadly, OSM Inspector can detect routing islands, and Osmose can detect when road classifications change abruptly; could a validator rule detect when a service=parking_aisle or service=driveway is the main roadway connecting two non-service=* ways? Moreover, we can pretty much guarantee that a parking lot circulatory road passes directly in front of every Walmart, Meijer, or other big-box store in the country, even if no bus goes through there. If that road is tagged as a service=parking_aisle, it’s a good sign to check everything around it too.
In the meantime, here are some examples of the edits I’ve made in response to this challenge so far, and I’ve only picked off a few tasks in one small town:
All the roads leading to this Walmart had been tagged as service=parking_aisle, even roads outside of the parking lot proper.
This parking lot was missing a bus stop and bicycle parking. The bus stop is on a minor aisle that I did not reclassify, but I did add bus=yes. Note the sweeping curve at the south end of the aisle, clearly designed to accommodate buses.
This parking lot was also missing a bus stop, which the transit agency apparently plopped right over some parking spaces.
Not only did this parking lot lack a bus stop and bicycle parking, but the bus stop’s location on the west side of the service road also indicated that all three bus routes were looping around the parking lot in the wrong direction, clockwise instead of counterclockwise.