Key:lit

The key lit=* indicates the presence of lighting and can be used on nodes, ways, areas, or relations.

Most often it is used on a way tagged with highway=* but sensible on many other nodes or ways, too, such as bus stops, advertising or pitches.

List of possible values

Value	Element	Comment	Photo
On
yes		There are lights installed: the times of operation are assumed to be during the night, usually from evening civil twilight on Wikipedia to morning civil twilight. Lights do not need to be purpose-built to lit this specific object, for example footway lit by a billboard or nearby motorway still can be lit=yes.
24/7		There are lights installed, which are always on even during the day. Examples include tunnels or indoors.
Off
no		There are no lights installed, and no artificial illumination at night.
disused		There are lights installed, but they are broken or out of use in the long-term.
Intermittent
automatic		There are lights installed, but they only turn on when something passes by, usually through motion detection.
limited		There are lights installed, but they are not always on during the night. Examples includes roads that have part-night street lighting in the United Kingdom. In some countries, such as Germany and Austria, they are specifically marked with a red band.
interval		Intended for use by flashing lights, typically used on top of tall structures like towers, buildings, or bridges.
operating times		The schema of opening_hours is in use to document when the light is on. However, due to the extensiveness of the opening hours syntax, it is hard for data consumers to interpret these correctly (hence, none does, currently). Also, as operating times are strictly a separate information from the physical presence of street lighting which can usually not be verified effectively on-site but depend on (shifting) regulations of individual municipalities, some mappers put this information in a separate tag. All of the alternative separate tags used so far experience miniscule usage however, see taginfo.

See also

• lit_by_led=yes: For streets lit by led lighting.
• lit_by_gaslight=yes: For streets lit by gas lighting.
  See also later proposals for details: Proposed features/Key:light_source

Common combinations

• highway=* - Roads and paths
• highway=crossing - Pedestrian crossings
• advertising=* - Advertising devices
• man_made=flagpole - Flagpoles
• Buildings
• Playgrounds
• Soccer stadiums
• Parking lots
• Sculptures
• Bus or tram stops

Rendering

The lit= tag on ways is infrequently rendered.

Highway lighting in London

• OsmAnd can show lit and unlit ways (to differentiate from ways without lit= data at all). Turn it on in Configure Map → Details → Street Lighting.
• Trail Router highlights lit ways ("unlit" ways might simply have no data) when you enable Avoid unlit streets in the settings. Note that the data is about half a year old as of December 2020 (grass and other features are up to date, but the lit layer is 3-9 months out of date).
• Map evaluating lit tag, seemingly meant to validate hours during which a way is lit. Performs an Overpass query and draws circles on ways with a lit tag (i.e., does not render whether a way is lit) merely which ways have data available. It also shows errors for most values, which can be safely ignored.

For rendering of individual lamp nodes, confer with the Rendering section of the street_lamp article.

Seasonally changing situation

This light will be blocked by leaves during summer

Measuring how well given footway is lit, even for binary lit/unlit status is tricky in many cases - for example many footways are well lit during winter when deciduous trees are without leaves and snow is reflecting light. During summer the same footway may be not lit.

Possible tagging mistakes

There are quite a lot of variations in lit-tagging, some commonly used not-listed values are:

lit=left

		$1%
		$1%
		$1%
		$1%

More details at taginfo

• lit=left

If you know places with this tag, verify if it could be tagged with another tag.
Automated edits are strongly discouraged unless you really know what you are doing!

lit=right

		$1%
		$1%
		$1%
		$1%

More details at taginfo

• lit=right

If you know places with this tag, verify if it could be tagged with another tag.
Automated edits are strongly discouraged unless you really know what you are doing!

See also

• highway=street_lamp
• luminous=* when something is emitting light
• piste:lit=* (see route=ski)
• lit:perceived=*
• lit_by_led=*
• Seamarks/Lights
• OpenSeaMap/Lights#Exhibition_Conditions
• Proposed features/Key:light_source
• Proposed features/Key:lit:type