Sydney Harbour Bridge unmapped carriageway

Communities Oceania
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Hi everyone,

I’ve noticed there’s a separated carriageway on the Sydney Harbour Bridge that is not mapped in OpenStreetMap. It appears in DCS NSW Base Map. Mapillary imagery from March 2025 also captures this carriageway (which diverges from lane 8 - captured in Mapillary) as a bus lane, with taxis also traversing along it.

How should this carriageway be tagged? Would using highway=busway imply the exclusion of taxis? Or would it be appropriate to copy the tags used on Cahill Expressway, where the tags denote bus=designated highway=motorway and access=no

If this separated carriageway is introduced into OSM, there might be the need for the newly mapped carriageway to review and inherit bus relations and other tags from Way: ‪Cahill Expressway‬ (‪142518144‬) | OpenStreetMap. Are there any additional considerations and tagging recommendations before adding this carriageway? Cheers :grinning_face:

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I think that highway=busway would only apply to bus only infrastructure ie: with a https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/7d/Australia_road_sign_R7-8.svg sign.

If I was doing it, I’d move Way: ‪Cahill Expressway‬ (‪142518144‬) | OpenStreetMap and it’s friends across and add the outer left lane in as a new set of ways. Then you’d only have to adjust the lane tagging.

EDIT: the tagging should be psv=designated as taxis are also allowed to use it. Also, I don’t know why the current tagging suggests conditional bus access. The street level imagery we can’t use hints that it’s been a 24 hour bus lane since at least 2008.

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actually the southern end is a conditional bus lane, to allow cars from the Milsons Point onramp to travel south onto the Western Distributor, but only at off-peak times.

It involes a rather confusing manoeuvre, but it’s handy for those who know about it