Proposal talk:Emergency access & exits

Deprecation of emergency_access

Resolved: The deprecation of service=emergency_access has been removed from the proposal.

I oppose the deprecation of service=emergency_access. It is a useful categorisation of the type of service road and has nothing to do with the legal access tags. You seem to have confused them in your motivation of the deprecation, claiming "it's unintuitive that you should use emergency=designated for highway=path, highway=footway, highway=pedestrian, etc. but should use service=emergency_access for highway=service". A highway=service with service=emergency_access should also use emergency=designated (and commonly also access=no) to indicate the road is only for emergency vehicles. The service=emergency_access portion describes the purpose of the service road, just like a driveway or parking aisle. Otherwise a good proposal! --Riiga (talk) 13:07, 27 June 2022 (UTC)

Thanks for your feedback :) As I understand it:

• if highway=service and service=emergency_access is used, emergency=designated should also always be added
• if highway=service and emergency=designated is used, service=emergency_access should also always be added

So we have two more general purpose tags highway=service and emergency=designated and when both of them intersect you should additionally add service=emergency_access? What for? It does not seem to add any information. --Push-f (talk) 14:36, 27 June 2022 (UTC)

No, we don't have two general purpose tags. emergency=designated shouldn't necessarily be added on all service=emergency_access. You can have a service road that isn't an emergency access road but which only allows certain vehicles, among them emergency vehicles. The same way you can also have an emergency access road that allows other vehicles. service=emergency_access describes the purpose, just like service=driveway gives additional information that a service road is a driveway. None of these imply any access tags, though it is probably true that most service=emergency_access will have emergency=designated or similar, just like service=driveway is likely to have access=private. --Riiga (talk) 20:44, 27 June 2022 (UTC)

emergency=designated and service=emergency_access both indicate that the way is intended for emergency services, neither tag indicates anything about other vehicles. So I still don't see any semantic differences between those tags (other than that the latter should only be used with highway=service) ... to me it seems like both describe the same purpose. Could you give an example of when emergency=designated should not be added to a service=emergency_access? --Push-f (talk) 05:25, 28 June 2022 (UTC)

I absolutely agreed with Riiga: service=emergency_access should not be deprecated and should therefore simply be removed from the proposal (I agree with all the other proposed changes).

service=emergency_access is about street classification, not about access. It describes that a way exists only for the purpose of serving as an access in case of emergency. Here you can find an example (access=emergency is outdated and should be removed): In case of an emergency, fire fighters can reach the adjacent building, otherwise the way is not used.

service=emergency_access might imply emergency=designated, but emergency=designated can also be tagged separately (or - in my opinion - emergency=yes, if there is no sign, but the emergency purpose is obvious). However, emergency=designated does not imply service=emergency_access: In my area, for example, many normal driveways (service=driveway) are signposted as access ways in case of emergency, which has legal implications, for example when parking in front of this driveways. However, this does not make these ways an service=emergency_access in sense of street classification/in sense of OSM tagging. -- Supaplex030 (talk) 06:04, 28 June 2022 (UTC)

Thanks for the example, I have removed the deprecation of service=emergency_access from the proposal. --Push-f (talk) 08:17, 28 June 2022 (UTC)

The emergency=* access key refers to vehicles

discussion moved here from Talk:Proposed features/exit

According to Key:access#List of possible values, the key "emergency" refers to emergency motor vehicles. This means that using it for entrances intended to be used by emergency services on foot would not match the usual meaning. --Tordanik 19:56, 28 June 2022 (UTC)

Good catch, but that's an existing inconsistency ... both emergency=yes and emergency=designated currently do not constrain the tags to motor vehicles.

It would be interesting to check how often emergency=* is currently used with highway=footway.

--Push-f (talk) 21:32, 28 June 2022 (UTC)

I am not sure if I have correctly understood the problem you are describing. But I'm using emergency=* regularly on footpaths and what I mean by that is: an emergency/fire fighting vehicle can use this path in an emergency to get to an incident location. The path is therefore suitable for use as a rescue route in terms of its accessibility (it's not blocked by fixed barriers) and condition (width and surface), but is otherwise not intended for vehicle traffic/is intended for pedestrians in everyday life (e.g. ways to buildings). -- Supaplex030 (talk) 07:22, 2 July 2022 (UTC)

P.S. same for features like gates: emergency=yes/designated on a gate (even with vehicle=no / foot=yes) means, a fire engine can drive through in an emergency. (In Germany, for example, there are regulations for the minimum width and height.) -- Supaplex030 (talk) 07:28, 2 July 2022 (UTC)

emergency_room=*

IMHO, emergency_room=* is more clean than emergencies=* and more differ from emergency=* - > less confusing. Something B wiki (talk) 09:53, 17 September 2022 (UTC)

Deprecate emergency=yes/no/designated for roads and barriers

I propose to deprecate emergency=yes/no/designated for roads and barriers and replace it with Conditional restrictions as "emergency" condition. Something B (talk) 12:25, 29 September 2022 (UTC)

Emergency entrances

At first, I thought the proposed renaming of entrance=emergency to exit=emergency was pointless. But then I came across an "emergency entrance" to a postal sorting facility. [1] (It makes sense that a postal sorting facility would have dedicated entrances for firefighters in case the highly flammable materials inside catch fire.) It would be pretty silly to have to come up with a tag other than entrance=emergency to denote such an entrance. – Minh Nguyễn ^💬 19:51, 10 February 2023 (UTC)