I’ve been wondering how to tag ice rinks, especially outdoor rinks. In temperate to mid-cold climates, an outdoor ice rink is a prominent local feature during the winter, but in the summer it’s gone. The rink could have been built on a water body, or on a concrete pad, or just on soil or grass. If it’s on concrete, in the warm months some are used as a skateboard parks, roller skating rinks, or basketball or tennis courts:
There’s https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Key:seasonal. Does anyone have suggestions for tagging the multiple uses of the same space throughout the year? Drawing two overlapping polygons feels… unsatisfactory?
Many outdoor rinks in Toronto and area are currently tagged Tag:leisure=ice_rink - OpenStreetMap Wiki (e.g. Way: 308305963 | OpenStreetMap, Way: 55983364 | OpenStreetMap), because well, at the very least the tag name certainly matches what we call it. leisure=ice_rink has 840 usages in Ontario (taginfo), 2800 in Canada (taginfo). But that tag then conflicts with tagging other sports, presumably with leisure=pitch. And the wiki guidance says “This tag is for places where there is substantial “infrastructure” to make the skating possible.” so a ring of bands boards and a concrete pad, even one with built-in cooling, maybe doesn’t qualify.
Various combinations of sport=*skating* add up to about 800 uses in Canada (taginfo), and around 150 in Ontario (taginfo). So it’s a far bit less popular, and that’s before checking how many of those are tagged on leisure=ice_rink vs leisure=pitch.
But pitch seems to work by wiki definitions. Should we switch to tagging leisure=pitch and sport=ice_skating;ice_hockey;tennis or ;skateboard etc? What have other ice skating regions used for tagging?
Is there a need to differentiate that there is a rink, and not just open ice? Would listing ice hockey as a value of sport be enough to imply that there’s a rink and goals?
Locally they turn the entire school sports fields into ice for the winter and assemble a rink that covers only a part of it.
Personally I think tagging sport=ice_hockey would be fine. So you’d consider an area of ice made for skating to be leisure=pitch and sport=ice_skating;whatever, and if it’s also got boards and maybe some markings or goals, tag sport=ice_skating;ice_hockey;whatever?
I’ve been thinking about this recently as well. An OSM based map of winter outdoor ice skating rinks would be quite useful! In many cases overlapping polygons representing the different summer and winter uses is probably appropriate. These examples show the same space used for one rink in the winter and multiple tennis(?) courts in the rest of the year, so several polygons for the tennis courts and one for the rink would be reasonable.
Another example: this square in Montreal is converted to an ice rink in the winter, but the area used for the rink is smaller than the full square so a smaller polygon representing it would be accurate.
As for what the rink polygon should be tagged, leisure=ice_rink + seasonal=yesis documented as meaning the rink is only open in the cold season. However, this could suggest it is still recognizable as a rink year round. i.e. the boards remain in place but there is no ice. It seems that often the rink infrastructure is installed for the winter only and disassembled for the rest of the year. So this tagging feels a bit lacking. leisure=ice_rink also conflicts with leisure=pitch in cases where the exact same space is used for an ice rink in winter and a single pitch in the rest of the year and thus a single polygon would be appropriate.
For ice skating paths there is piste:type=ice_skate. I find the piste:* namespace to be a good solution for mapping winter trails because it can be easily ignored by data consumers aiming to show the non-winter state of things. This is useful whether tagged on a dedicated piste way that only exists in winter or added on to a highway=* that becomes a piste in winter. Shoehorning rinks into this namespace might be a bit awkward since they aren’t called pistes, but it could be a pragmatic solution for rinks that only exist in winter.
There are no ice rinks in my area - not cold enough outside and no money for indoor ice rinks - but to my understanding an ice rink is nothing one would describe as a pitch. Looking at this issue from a “far away perspective” the wiki description
This tag is for places where there is substantial infrastructure to make the skating possible.
just expresses that a frozen lake does not qualify for an ice rink whereas a concrete pad with some board around and some illumination does, even if the mobile parts of this infrastructure are completely removed in summer season. I would not hesitate to tag such an area as leisure=ice_rink + seasonal=winter in any case.
Those places which are used as ice rink in winter season and other sports in summer represent different object and I do not see much of a reason why they should not be mapped as such:
We do the same for overlapping landuses so why should such an area not get along with a rounded polygon tagged as leisure=ice_rink + seasonal=winter + an overlapping rectangular area tagged as leisure pitch + sport=* + seasonal=summer? I’d say this is way better than trying to squeeze the ice rink into the leisure=pitch + sport=ice_whatever.
Generally for an ice rink and for the courts you’ve got in your exemplar photo (your post and others have mentioned tennis and basketball but the ones in your linked photos look like badminton to me ) I wouldn’t hesitate to map overlapping leisure=* areas, with all of them tagged seasonal=* as required.
The only situation where I’d combine the info into one area would be where the summer usage makes use of the entire surface, e.g. box lacrosse or ball hockey. I’m not entirely sure how best to parse the seasonality of the uses though…
I think one thing to consider is “Is this actually a seasonal ice hockey rink?” Both of these examples look indistinguishable from year-round rollerhockey facilities save for the pickleball courts painted in. There’s also a combination bicycle polo/roller hockey/basketball court near me, so I would hazard to guess the roller hockey scenario is more prevalent in places that aren’t frozen all winter.
We do have a seasonal ice hockey rink in Tulsa, however, 4th Street in front of our main ice hockey stadium (the BOK Center) is where that’s set up; I haven’t mapped it because the exact location along the block changes annually (beyond the seasonal closure to vehicles on the street, which is consistent year to year).
I have skated on one of the rinks pictured in my message and seen people skate on the other, and I can assure you it is!
Certainly there could be some things that look similar to ice rinks but aren’t, and I encourage everyone to map only with local knowledge, but in this thread I meant to discuss actual ice rinks.
) I wouldn’t hesitate to map overlapping 