Proposal talk:Bypass

"Bypass" is a good name, as in many places in the UK something will be called a ring road, even if it is only 2/3 (sometimes less) of the way around a town or location.

i assume this is to be used alongside existing highway tags?

--O0235 (talk) 17:02, 13 August 2025 (UTC)

Thanks for the curious fact though 'bypass' still needs to be the name because of the existence of small "detours" around a town or village.

Of course this is just an add-on to highway tags or road route relations.--Pavvv (talk) 17:09, 13 August 2025 (UTC)

Too Subjective

I don't believe this new tag is necessary. We already have ref=* for the official route number, and name=* can be used if a bypass is prominent enough to be named as such. I also don't think this scheme can be internationalized very well. In the United States a bypass will often be built as part of a larger highway (such as an interstate) or as part of a dual carriageway upgrade to an existing highway. This could involve significant route changes along the entire length of the highway if there is no space to build more lanes. Thus, it is difficult to determine where the bypass tagging should start and end. In fact, it is quite rare for a bypass route to be officially signed as such, instead the main road will be moved and the former road will be signed as "Route xxx Business" (usually tagged in ref=*). There are also cases where a bypass gradually becomes a major route for local traffic as a city grows, for example the Capital Beltway around Washington DC. If there is still consensus about tagging bypasses, I would suggest simplifying the tag to bypass=yes because values like "core", "centre", and "urban" don't really have any clear distinction. --Andrewth1 (talk) 17:23, 16 August 2025 (UTC)

In e.g. tenders for road design, some road sections are described as a bypass for X which could be one of the main ways of checking whether a road is a bypass.

For not prominent enough of bypasses, name=* should not be used.

I agree that especially in the US, it might be hard to apply this scheme. It's been pointed out in the forum thread so in there this scheme shouldn't be used or something like bypass:for:ref could be coined in some cases. Either way the Capital Beltway could still be tagged as bypass=regional + bypass:for=Washington DC;… despite it being the main way for other cities. This where the tagging on relations instead of ways becomes most handy to further avoid confusion.

The tag's values do have a distinction, most of which has been described on the Polish Wikipedia article but there's still room for improvement among the value's names and explanations. --Pavvv (talk) 08:47, 17 August 2025 (UTC)

That's also my problem. It's sometimes hard to see it but once motorisation has came to earth, many new roads bypasses were built to redirect traffic from fairly narrow roads built for at most horse carriages. The only reason they don't appear so is because they allowed themselves to be built up (although depending on the locations, the amount of driveways on designated bypasses are limited by design) or because the bypass has a natural layout that you won't even register it's built primarily as a bypass (although granted, I'm also biased towards railway=abandoned, which also suffers from a kind of subjectivity).

And really, I'm also of the opinion that the given highway values and other tags are a better, more natural way to denote bypasses, or use something like type=route (especially if it's a non-motorway related route=detour), particularly because the bypass happens to be e.g. a motorway which prevents certain vehicles and pedestrians to use it. --ManuelB701 (talk) 16:25, 1 September 2025 (UTC)