Proposal:Service=shared driveway
| Service=shared driveway | |
|---|---|
| Proposal status: | Draft (under way) |
| Proposed by: | Aharvey |
| Draft started: | 2025-11-16 |
Problem Statement
The tags service=pipestem and driveway=pipestem have become the "defacto" tags for a shared driveway, being documented as such on this wiki and in actual use by mappers, however a recent community discussion thread about shared driveways, has shown the term "pipestem" has a very specific meaning, being a specific type of driveway and is not actually synonymous with a shared driveway (which is how it was sometimes being used in OSM). The "pipestem" term itself is not well understood to a global audience and a community poll showed a overwhelming majority prefer to use service=shared_driveway for a generic shared driveway.
Proposal
While, service=shared_driveway is already in use, this proposal is about documenting it as the approved method of tagging a shared driveway.
While there are many factors to consider if a way is a road (eg. highway=residential), or an alley-way/lane-way (service=alley) or a shared driveway (service=shared_driveway) or a driveway (service=driveway), as is common, the actual use and function on the ground should take priority.
A formal definition or criteria of what is a shared driveway and what is not is not given, there should be some flexibility for local variations and situations, but generally, just like with a driveway, a shared driveway would be privately owned and maintained by the residence(s) who use it, as opposed to a public road, and generally a shared driveway leads to each individual residences own driveways or access points along the shared driveway.
Rationale
By using service=shared_driveway we avoid a number of tagging issues including,
- avoiding using the term "pipestem" which is not well understood in a global context, and likely has a very narrow meaning beyond shared driveway, whereas the term "shared driveway" is much more universally understood
- leaves
service=drivewayto mean a non-shared driveway - avoiding having three levels of tags (
highway=service+service=driveway+driveway=pipestem) which is tedious to tag and instead only have two levels of tagshighway=service+service=shared_driveway) - avoiding the open question about if it should be
service=pipestemorservice=driveway+driveway=pipestem - avoiding an issue where
driveway=shared_drivewaywould then leave aservice=drivewayas ambiguous and avoid needing adriveway=non_shared_drivewaytag
By using a dedicated tag for a shared driveway we assist data consumers, routers, and map renders by having shared driveways as more important and driveways as less important. A renderer can choose to show shared driveways at lower zoom levels, or just decide to not show driveways but still show shared driveways.
Tagging
| Example road layout | Tags under this proposal | Image |
|---|---|---|
| Road leading to single building or single owner of multiple buildings | highway=service + service=driveway
|
|
| Road leading to the rear of several buildings | highway=service + service=alley
|
[1] |
Road leading to several service=driveway
|
highway=service + service=shared_driveway
|
Examples
Examples are seen on the forum topic:
- Simple branching structure. [2]
- Extremely long shared driveway that is sourced from the turning circle at the end of a government-operated residential road. [3]
- 4-way driveway sharing in a 4-plex development. (Same post)
Non-example:
- These 5 adjacent driveways are 5 separate `service=driveway`s. [4]
| Example | Description |
|---|---|
| Private Estate / Gated Community | In this case, if the road into the private estate / gated community is private (residents only) and the roadway itself is private land within the estate, and maintanance is shared among the properties within the community, and there are branching driveways, it may still be mapped as highway=residential if the form and function matches highway=residential. That is the private land, shared maintenance and branching driveways don't always imply it must be a shared driveway.
|
Branching service=driveway
|
At this property, the driveway branches with one leading to the entrance of the residence and another leading to the garage. Since these driveways are all within one property they are all tagged as service=driveway despite "branching" off.
|
service=shared_driveway without branches
|
This would be service=shared_driveway because the driveway serves 5 distinct properties, despite there being no service=driveway ways branching off.
|
Impact on Data Consumers
Data consumers who were previously relying on the pipestem tags for a "shared driveway" would be impacted, but none of the major data consumers rely on this as far as we can tell, so it's still better to make this change now.
These ways were and still are tagged as highway=service so there's no change there.
It is recommended that turn navigation consumers consider special navigation for shared driveways ("your destination is the second driveway on the right"; ignoring them when departing).
Features/Pages affected
External discussions
Comments
Please comment on the discussion page.