Hello.
I have frequently come across roads where the leftmost lane may be parked in, but it may also be driven in normally. I.e., you may drive in this lane if no one is parked in your way.
How should I go about tagging these roads? I’m confused because it isn’t dedicated street parking, so I didn’t think parking:left=lane would be correct, but I wouldn’t know what to tag it as without this.
To clarify, does the road or street you’re thinking of look like one of those? Or could you upload a picture or link to a street view somewhere on the internet (Google is okay when used as illustration for discussion)?
(The photos below are in a right-hand traffic area, I assume you are in left-hand traffic?)
This is a one-way street, with area at right curb being legal to park on, with considerable gaps between cars so it could be driven on. No lane markings:
This is a two-way street where curb lane may be used for parking at given times, but would probably be considered a “traffic lane” when not parked on. Centre lanes are traffic lanes at all times. Lane markings are painted.
Yes, I suspect parking:left=lane is what you want.
You can read a little bit more details on it in the:
=lane is what you want.where it currently says:
lane= On the carriageway, which could otherwise be traversed by vehicles.
Note: If you wanted to micromap the actual area instead of marking the way, then there’s:
If you link to the exact area in OSM (or share a screenshot), then that sometimes makes it easier.
People could then look at it and see what they think. There are some real oddities out there in the real-world. 
Side Note: If you wanted to dive really deep into street parking, you may also be interested in the resources I linked in:
@tordans has done a massive amount of street parking additions (+ awesome analysis).
You can probably use Overpass to see how parking:left is currently being done in German cities (like Munich), then try to replicate it elsewhere.
The meaning of =lane that it can be used by traffic is only for the physical layout. It should be dedicated to parking now legally and operationally. The space needs to be redesignated and changed to a travel lane first. You should not be expected to drive through it.
This should be =no
I don’t understand your answer. What should be =no? parking:left? But the very definition of parking=lane is that you can park your car on the carriageway, not that the lane is dedicated to parking.
It’s documented nicely on the wiki:
A parking=lane means that when driving there, you will have to drive around the cars parked on the lane, meaning that you cannot expect to drive with full speed and if there’s only 1 lane in each direction, you will sometimes have to stop to let others through.
Usually, residential streets with parking can be traversed freely with only encountering one or two cars if you drive there during work hours.
If it is a street where you can theoretically park, but often nobody parks or a street without markings and without signage but enough space for parking: Simply tag parking:*=lane and preferably also the width of the lane (from curb to curb or edge to edge):
parking:right = lane
parking:right:orientation = parallel
width = 12
You can use parking:*=lane regardless of whether vehicles usually park on this street or whether it is explicitly signposted. So if parking is allowed there according to local legislation, parking:*=lane is the appropriate tagging.
P. S. Another case are streets with marked lanes that are temporarily intended for parking according to the signage. Conditional tagging would be a good choice to map this as precisely as possible, e. g.
parking:right = lane
parking:right:orientation = parallel
parking:right:restriction:conditional = no_stopping @ (06:00-18:00)
lanes = 2
lanes:conditional = 1 @ (18:00-06:00)
Ok there’s a problem with definition then. How was it intended to distinguish an extra lane or width, compared to parking/stopping by fully occupying the outermost travel lane?
In the example given now, why should lanes= changed to lanes:conditional= . if it’s supposed to be a parking:right=lane ? parking:*= is supposed to be physical layout. The usage would already be covered by parking:right:restriction:conditional=
If you’re not allowed to drive on that separate lane, I would rather tag it parking:<side>=street_side than =lane, because it’s not really part of the carriageway anymore. But I haven’t seen these over here, so never spent much thought on them 
Key:lanes - OpenStreetMap Wiki is used to count travel lanes/traffic lanes/lanes one can generally drive on. This excludes parking lanes. So while the lane is used for parking, there is only 1 lane, but when not, there are 2 lanes. This has to be specified because that parking lane might become something else, e.g. a cycle lane . Those are also not included in the lanes total.
bus lanes are counted, it depends on width which lanes are counted
The problem above is there’s already parking:right=lane and parking:right:restriction:conditional=no_stopping @ (06:00-16:00) to accompany. Are you asking for lanes= to be modified by lanes:conditional= for all parking:*=lane + parking:*:restriction:conditional= ?
If parking:*=lane already means parking/stopping on that lane, why lanes= needs to be affected? parking:*= was emphasized to be the physical layout, so it should not get eg parking:right=no + parking:right:conditional=lane @ (18:00-06:00 furthere.
Right, my mistake. The wiki article is correct.
But =street_side would cause a false impression there’s extra parking space outside the lanes=2 ?
I guess so. If you have an example, I can say how I might want to tag it.
Because lanes= does not include lanes for parking, despite the naming.
Why shouldn’t it get those tags? The layout changes during the day. The value for parking:*= refers to the physical location that is reserved for parking, which is different depending on the time of day.
If you tag these dedicated parking lanes as =street_side, I would not add them to the total lanes=*.
Let’s say we have a non-one-way road with 1 lane in each direction, and in forward direction, on the right side, there’s a separate parking lane. I would tag this:
lanes=2
parking:right=street_side
And not lanes=3 + lanes:forward=2.
It cannot be part of lanes=* if you’re not allowed to drive there, which is given for dedicated parking lanes.
Update: I’m seeing now that this is not in line with the official wiki documentation lane vs. street_side, so maybe @Supaplex030 has a better suggestion.
I think we need a parking=traffic_lane tag.
There are two distinct types of parking within the carriage way.
parking=lane You can park inside the road carriage way, which if nobody was parked there cars could use that space to drive through, but not as an extra lane, and you aren’t blocking traffic completely by parking there.
parking=traffic_lane You can park inside a traffic lane. Cars can drive through the lane, but if they encounter a parked car, they need to change lanes.
In this case it should still be lanes=4. The parking may be 24/7 or it may only be during certain times (eg night), but even if it’s conditional parking, the lane is still open to traffic (if no body is parking there) so it’s wrong to make lanes:conditional.
I prefer clarifying =no first before deciding. The “extra width” I was thinking about could still be part of the roadway.
I see exactly the same situation in both pictures, with the only difference that there are lane_markings in the second picture (and the carriageway is wider). So I can’t see why there is a need for a new value here…
If there are parked vehicles on the carriageway, isn’t it always the case that you could drive there if nobody stands there? But if there are cars parked there quite regularly, then you can’t drive there and then you have to pick a corresponding number of lanes. In the second picture, in my opinion, lanes=2 if there are cars parked there regularly (because then you can generally only drive in one lane in each direction and that is what lanes mean).
It gets complicated. In Toronto we have streets where parking is allowed in the lane most of the time, but not during peak hours in peak direction (in an attempt to increase car throughput), so we can have 2 or 3 total lanes with 1 or 2 lanes per direction. So do we use lanes:conditional, and lanes:forward:conditional? And which is the “primary” lanes value - the smaller through lanes count for 18 hours of the day, or the larger lanes count when most cars are using it?
Wouldn’t that rather be parking:<side>:conditional=no @ (add peak times here)? The street will always have the same number of lanes, it’s just that sometimes they are used for parking mainly.
