What does `maxwidth:physical` describe for gates and doors?

General talk Tagging general discussion
1

There are two competing interpretations here:

  1. maxwidth:physical describes the immediate passable clearance width that is available without (further) opening the gate/door
    e.g. a closed gate would always have maxwidth:physical=0 and only a permanently open gate would get maxwidth:physical values greater 0

  2. maxwidth:physical describes the passable clearance width that is available after fully opening the gate/door (regardless of whether it is usually closed or not)
    e.g. a closed gate would have maxwidth:physical values greater 0

Please vote what you think or let us know in the comments.

    1. clearance width without (further) opening the gate/door
    1. clearance width after fully opening the gate/door
0 voters

Reason for the question

The proposal Proposal:Key:opened= - OpenStreetMap Wiki wants to establish a tag that describes whether something (like a gate or door) is usually open. Additionally when something is usually partially open (e.g. only one wing of a gate is open, or a gate is only partially slid to the side) the proposal wants to record the partial clearance width. There is a dispute whether this is already described by maxwidth:physical or whether another tag (like opening) is required.

The full clearance width of doors is currently tagged with width.
The full clearance width of barriers is currently tagged with maxwidth:physical or maxwidth while width would describe the overall extent of the barrier.

Usage count:

Both tags mostly target barriers, while maxwidth:physical is also used on ways. Both tags are currently not used on doors.

2

It’s a tag to determine whether you can move through an obstruction marking it as 0 for closed things would be rather … pointless?

2 Likes
3

IMO the current tag usage is:

maxwidth - how wide is the vehicle allowed to be due to signs or law
maxwidth:physical - how wide the vehicle may be due to physical constraints
opening - how wide the opening in a barrier is

The sketch shown on opening shows nicely what the difference between maxwidth:physical and opening is: A vehicle as wide as the opening won’t pass through the staggered cycle barrier and the actual width that fits through depends on the specific vehicle.
So, whether opening or maxwidth:physical is used on a given barrier has to be decided on a case-by-case basis, although they are likely equal in many cases.

About your use case:
For doors that are usually fully closed I think there is no ambiguity that either opening or maxwidth tags should refer to the opened state. That is, regardless of who is able to open the door (which is tagged by other access tags). I would not use values of 0 here, that would be just redundant and confusing.

For barriers that are always open a bit, but can be fully opened by a regular user, I would use the same logic as for the closed door.

For the case that regular users can pass through a slightly open door but it can be opened only by a dedicated group of users (e.g. a key is needed) I would add the restriction for the regular user as maxwidth / opening and introduce a new key for the fully opened case, e.g. maxwidth:opened.
In other words: Have the value that applies to most users in the common tag and have a special tag for the case that applies to special users.

4

Deleted due to wrong post reference, which can’t be edited.

5

Meaningless poll, if you don’t point to this discussion!

The point is: If you assume, that the partial door open state is permanent enough to be mapped by your proposal, then the partial opening is permanent enough to maxwidth:physical to apply to it.