Proposal:Detailed indoor stairs mapping2

detailed indoor stairs mapping
Proposal status:	Proposed (under way)
Proposed by:	CommanderStorm
Applies to:
Definition:	A convention on how to tag stairs and staircases in indoor settings
Draft started:	2025-11-12
RFC start:	2025-12-03

This is a resurrection of https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Proposal:Detailed_indoor_stairs_mapping

Proposal

This proposal proposes a way for the mapping of staris and staircases.

A staircase should be mapped in indoor areas as follows:

• The centerline of the steps should be mapped as a with highway=steps
• A half-level where two step stairs collide should be mapped as an with indoor=area

Rationale

We believe that in indoor-settings, mapping stairs is necessary for good indoor maps.

The rendering of accurate indoor maps requires areas in the building to be mapped as such, while most navigation systems require ways with traditional highway=*-attributes to facilitate accurate routing.

Tagging

The tagging does not change. It is already documented as such, what changes is that the documentation of Simple Indoor Tagging reflects what is already documented on Tag:highway=steps

• The centreline of the steps highway=steps as a
  • The step way can get additional tags like incline=*, step_count=*, step:height=* to provide more information

Examples

tagging	real world example
Stairs can exist freestanding with landings
Or in stairwells with landings
Are not limited to being linear elements

The rare case where stairs that are used as a non-linear barrier is not covered. They are generally broad and have few steps, and thus not well suited to the proposed tagging. barrier=steps (i.e. 90° flipped) would be more ergonomic, but this is a different proposal.

There is one case which are not covered by this proposal: If stairs are used as a barrier, this is out of scope of this proposal. Tagging such stairs is not possible before and after the proposal.

Rendering

Example how an indoor renderer could render stairs

• Outdoor renderers can keep their normal rendering
  • => non-breaking
• Indoor renders would be encouraged to render the stairs to show that a stair exists
  • => already mostly supported

Features/Pages affected

Simple Indoor Tagging

(As a link) Tag:highway=steps

Key:indoor

External discussions

This was initially discussed here https://community.openstreetmap.org/t/correct-way-to-map-indoor-stairs/137181

Comments

Please comment on the discussion page.