Ski / piste tagging improvements

General talk Tagging general discussion
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I’d like to propose several skiing related additions to OSM’s tagging scheme. I think these would increase the utility of OSM derived piste maps. I am the developer of OpenSkiMap.org and would adopt these tags in the map/interface.

Snowmaking

Problem: There is currently no good way to identify which pistes have snowmaking to secure their operation. The existing approach of tagging individual snow cannon nodes man_made=snow_cannon is too detailed and can’t be visualized well. In many cases, especially nordic, snow is made in a single location and then distributed along a defined route using groomers and trucks. It’s also hard to map accurately as snow cannons are often portable.

Proposal:

A tag on the piste way/area to indicate that it has snowmaking to secure its operation piste:snowmaking = yes/no (defaults to no)

In addition, piste:snowfarming = yes/no could be introduced to indicate that snow is preserved from the previous season to secure the early season operations (thank you @yvecai for the suggestion)

Road crossings

Problem: in nordic skiing, road crossings which require removal of skis are common. When planning a route, I’d like to see these crossings so I can avoid them if possible. It’s not possible to distinguish plowed and unplowed crossings from the existing OSM data.

Proposal:

A new tag on piste-road junction nodes:

piste:dismount = yes/sometimes/no (defaults to no)

I’ve added sometimes as some crossings fall in a grey zone. There may be snow placed on a crossing in midwinter, but in spring this is not maintained as it melts too quickly.

Disambiguation of sport=skiing

Problem: the sport=skiing tag is ambiguous - downhill skiing, nordic skiing, ski touring, etc are different disciplines with different user groups.

Proposal:

Deprecate sport=skiing and introduce discipline specific tags:

sport=downhill_skiing

sport=cross_country_skiing

sport=ski_touring

Disambiguation of site=piste / landuse=winter_sports

Problem: To determine which disciplines are available at a ski area, one must inspect the piste:type of member / contained ways. This is fragile especially in case of adjacent or overlapping areas. Nordic and downhill ski areas are often separately operated, but adjacent or even overlapping each other.

Proposal:

Encourage the addition of a disambiguated sport tag to site=piste or landuse=winter_sports to declare what disciplines are available.

Thanks for your consideration.

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In general, these look like good improvements to me. My only hesitation would be the wholesale deprecation of sport=skiing.

I would suggest instead that a subtag be created instead: skiing=downhill | cross_country | touring This would clarify the type of skiing without breaking any existing users of the data and would allow a smoother transition on tagging.

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I agree with n76, all the proposal are good to me. For the ski style I think we can use the same method used for climbing style:

Sport=climbing

Climbing:sport=yes

Climbing:boulder=yes

So

Sport=skiing

Skiing:downhill=yes

Skiing:Nordic=yes

I’m not big fan of this tagging scheme but at least it’s aligned with climbing (and maybe other sport)

I’m big fan of openskimap, thanks man! :oncoming_fist:

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This is at least as robust as the pistes mapping is. I’m afraid having a long list of seldom used niche tags is also prone to error and incompletness. But why not, more information can’t be bad.