aeroway=parking_position tag and its label is not rendered

[mattyhe]

Expected behavior

Gates [edit: aeroway=parking_position] were displayed at London Gatwick Airport but has disappeared.
Show gates at LGW

Actual behavior

No gates [edit: aeroway=parking_position] showing at LGW

Links and screenshots illustrating the problem

Before:

After:

[jeisenbe]

Thank you for the report. This style currently renders aeroway=gate, but does not yet render aeroway=parking_position.

Could you confirm if the features that are missing at London Gatwick Airport are tagged as aeroway=gate rather than aeroway=parking_position, or provide a link to the precise location of the problem?

[mboeringa]

Could you confirm if the features that are missing at London Gatwick Airport are tagged as aeroway=gate rather than aeroway=parking_position, or provide a link to the precise location of the problem?

The history explains it all:
https://www.openstreetmap.org/way/402900313/history

[jeisenbe]

According to the link above, these features were previously rendered when tagged as aeroway=taxiway - the ref is rendered in this case. Now they have been changed back to aeroway=parking_position which is not yet rendered.

Per to Tag:aeroway=parking_position, most of these features have the same ref as the associated aeroway=gate.

This would lead to problems when rendering both the gate ref and parking_position ref at airports where these two numbers are the same.

Is there a benefit to showing the ref of a parking_position on a general map? It seems like this information is only of interest to pilots and airport staff, not general map users?

[mattyhe]

There is a large benefit from displaying the parking positions - OSM is a frequently used map for airport/aircraft related applications and services as other map providers completely lack the accuracy of OSM when it comes to airports.

[jeisenbe]

While OSM might be a good source for air navigation mapping, this style is a general-purpose map. What is the use case for showing aeroway=parking_position in this style, rather than in a transportation or aviation-specific map?

Is there a good example of a place where the parking position ref is not the same as the gate ref to start?

[kocio-pl]

I believe this would make map complete there and it's not visually competing with other features. All the ways on the airport are not meant for general audience anyway, yet we show them, because they're big and visible.

[jeisenbe]

It would often duplicate the rendering of the ref for the nearest aeroway=gate. It might be fine to render parking_position ways with a thinner version of the taxiway line, but the text label rendering for the ref for nodes and on ways may be a problem.

[kocio-pl]

I'm not sure about refs, but some rendering of these lines is missing for me (your proposition sounds sane for me).

[mattyhe]

What would be the steps to make OSM render the aeroways and gates for LGW again?

[jeisenbe]

We are still rendering any aeroway=gate features at LGW and all other airports. The first post does not have a link to the exact location of the problem, but I downloaded the area around https://www.openstreetmap.org/way/402900313/ - this area appears to be a plane parking area with several parking positions, but no gates, because it is not located next to a terminal building.

So this is a good example of a place where rendering the ref of an aeroway=parking_position would not create confusing duplicates, but I still question if it is useful information for a general map user. Rendering runway and taxiway ref codes is also low utility, but at least there is no chance of it causing confusion. An example where there might be confusion between parking_position and gate might be here at Bremen Airport: https://www.openstreetmap.org/node/3482241715 vs https://www.openstreetmap.org/way/341008364 - the parking position and gate have a similar ref (02 vs A02) and are only 40 meters apart. (But I see that in most other cases the nearest parking_position and gate ref are a bit different, so it wouldn't be too confusing)

Gates are features where passengers wait for their plane - they exit through the gate to board the aircraft, so these are quite useful for general map users who want to find the way to their plane. All of these should be rendered fine currently.

[kocio-pl]

Most of the things on the airport excluding terminal are not intended for general person, including aprons and runways, so I think we can safely render them too, to have a complete set of roads with labels. Refs are also nothing special to the avionics, it's just a context for a given road. I doubt anyone would mix "A02" on terminal with "02" on road, but I see no problem rendering them later, like z18+.

[jeisenbe]

Fair enough. I'd be happy to review some test renderings, if anyone is interested in making some which show the ref and perhaps a line rendering for aeroway=parking_position at fairly high zoom levels.

[matkoniecz]

I changed title as it is not limited to this specific airport, but about tag in the general.

[jeisenbe]

@mattyhe are you interested in fixing this issue by submitting a PR?

[mattyhe]

Hi Joseph! I am highly interested in fixing the issue – however my experience on GitHub and editing OSM is limited. Are there any instructions for submitting a PR? More than happy to do so.

[jeisenbe]

Start out by reading CONTRIBUTING.md and INSTALL.md.

If you are not using a Unix-based OS like Linux, you might prefer to start by downloading Docker and following the instructions in our file DOCKER.md, including the instruction about how to make a fork of this repository and then clone in to your system. This is usually faster and simpler.

Then you can follow the guide by User @SomeoneElseOSM: "it was designed to be a step-by-step guide to what would be required, with no prior knowledge of git or github:" https://www.openstreetmap.org/user/SomeoneElse/diary/43041

If you've never used git or github before, you might need to follow a number of links in that article to find out how the do each step in detail.

Here is another guide which has detailed instructions and the code you can copy and paste into the command line for each step, in most cases: https://ircama.github.io/osm-carto-tutorials/git-workflow/

It can be helpful to look at some other finished PRs to see what changes were made. For example, #3754 added a text label for a linear feature, and #3443 added a line rendering for another feature.

In this case you might also copy part of the code for aeroway=taxiway found in project.mml, road.mss and amenity-points.mss, though some adjustments will be needed.

[jeisenbe]

I also attempted a step-by-step guide in a previous issue, which does not assume that you know anything about software development. #3782 (comment)

[Anakin86]

I think it should be rendered, because in many cases it has already been rendered earlier :) For example:
https://www.openstreetmap.org/way/185525814/history#map=18/55.60263/37.27712
Initially it was tagged as aeroway=taxiway and rendered accordingly, Then tag was changed to the new established one - so now we have some kind of "shredded" airfield, where taxiways are being interrupted in the places of parking positions. Here is another example: https://www.openstreetmap.org/#map=17/56.22278/43.78905