Is this guidance live? Should I be switching my dedicated stadium lots to Point Places now?

DwarfLord wrote:Ummm...there are no sample images in the Parking-Lot wiki article...did you mean to post this in the thread for the top-level Places article? It's definitely worth a mention there.

I think its valid to be mentioned in the Places main article; however, only Parking Lot or Gas Station places suppress traffic/map errors/etc. So the reasoning to prevent snapping for other areas would be limited to keeping roads from being dragged accidently during editing.

sketch wrote:

nzahn1 wrote:I think its valid to be mentioned in the Places main article; however, only Parking Lot or Gas Station places suppress traffic/map errors/etc. So the reasoning to prevent snapping for other areas would be limited to keeping roads from being dragged accidently during editing.

They don't actually. Parking lot and gas station areas do not suppress traffic reporting. It's questionable whether they even suppress MPs. That's why many of us are supporting PLRs in every gas station now.

I actually had someone say that these types of area Places affected routing too; I thought I was being conservative when I said traffic/errors only. I guess we need someone with a big empty area to build a small town and test all these things. Or we could ask staff, but yeah.

Timbones wrote:

DwarfLord wrote:In recent months I've encountered some compliant public parking lots located underneath freeway viaducts. These are a pain to map in separate chunks to avoid overlapping the freeway, and not accurate to do so either. Is it time to remove the prohibition against mapping Parking-Lot Area Places over roads bearing through traffic?

Perhaps a point place would be more appropriate for these, given that areas have no special properties, and won't be visible on the map (except for maybe the label)?

I agree. Especially since the public version of the apps now flag nearby Parking Lot places (both point and area) when approaching the destination.

Timbones wrote:We've independently asked staff about this on more than one occasion, and they insist that no type of place affects routing or traffic data. Parking lot segments don't suppress traffic jams, except by keeping stopped cars off of main routes.

Also, missing road map problems have been known to appear within parking lots and gas station areas.

Question answered! Thanks!
The intro video (i.e. all the training a new editor needs /sarc) implies that parking areas actively keep the Router from getting confused. I assume that this is actually performed by parking lot roads running near proper streets.

Now I know better, I've gone back and removed most of the parking lots I flung around town.

AlanOfTheBerg wrote:

CBenson wrote:I agree with your logic. But, if we are going to mark every urban pay parking lot as an area place, we are essentially conceding that downtown areas will be completely covered with area places. Such lots aren't reference points for navigation, they are just potential destinations.

I don't see why every PLot needs to be an Area.

Agreed.

Perhaps guidance should be that if a parking lot is inside a structure that primarily has non-PL purposes, it should only be mapped as a point at its one or two primary entrances. If it is open air or has a dedicated parking building, it can be marked as a point if it has one or two primary entrances, or as an area if it is either a prominent "landmark" or has many entrances that would cause clutter if marked individually.

DwarfLord wrote:

qwaletee wrote:Perhaps guidance should be that if a parking lot is inside a structure that primarily has non-PL purposes, it should only be mapped as a point at its one or two primary entrances. If it is open air or has a dedicated parking building, it can be marked as a point if it has one or two primary entrances, or as an area if it is either a prominent "landmark" or has many entrances that would cause clutter if marked individually.

I really like the idea of using entrance count as a criterion for area vs. point, combining with the requirement that the entire enclosed area be dedicated to parking.

My initial thought is that even just two entrances would qualify a dedicated parking area for the Area type, but that depends on what happens if one sticks with Place Points instead. Is there leaning towards providing facilities with multiple entrances with a separate Place Point for each entrance? That's a head-scratcher for me due to the editor clutter and maintenance overhead involved.

I would think that multiple entries into a parking facility, at least, should be handled with Parking-Lot Roads and the routing engine combined with a single Point (located slightly interior rather than explicitly favoring one entrance or the other).

That's not a bad idea, and is more or less the way gas stations often work, but it might be problematic for indoor parking lots.

You saw it in the create menu. But you've already muscle-memorized U and Y, so you haven't seen it more than 3x

Personally, I'm a gearhead, and would have put in POLYGONS and PINS, because, well, words and clarity, but that's not even going to be a skirmish. Or LANDMARKS and POI, since that's what the two types really represent and how they differ. But awkwardness shall live on forever in the accepted terminology.

/soapbox

DwarfLord,

In this context, area and point clearly are being used as adjectives, but in such a way that they have become proper nouns. Theres long precedent for it. Witness Her Royal Highness Queen such-and-such.

Not that awkward.

I didn't say not awkward. I said not THAT awkward. As additional words get added, it actually twists the language parts again, and gets further into don't-go-there territory.

Parking-Lot Area Place. Let's analyze that. Parking-Lot no matter what goes along with it will be problematic. The dash is archaic. In its origin, parking is an adv modifying the n lot, but it has come to be a compound noun, same as Area Place is POTENTIALLY becoming a compound noun.

OK, so now we have the Paring-Lot archaically-dashed compound-noun, and the newly minted Area Place compound noun, both morphed from a form of noun-as-adjective modifying another noun. We then compound that compounding. So ParkingLot, a noun, becomes and adjective of Area Place, which is a noun, but as a word group, the adj-noun becomes a compound noun itself.

That's all well and good if the phrasing is intuitive to a regular English speaker. We usually don't have to deconstruct the form to figure out what it means. In this case it is so long and made up of some many parts joined and joined again, that the meaning is NOT intuitively obvious.

I'm lobbying for the return of Landmark again. Parking Lot Landmark is at least easy to understand.