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.

Recommended use

• lit=yes: There are lights installed. It is not specified when they are on, but it can be assumed they are switched on/off some time during civil twilight.
• lit=no: There are no lights installed and there is no illumination.

Additional values

• lit=24/7: Lights that are always on, both night and day; e.g. in tunnels or indoors.
• lit=automatic: Lights are on when someone passes by; e.g. motion detection.
• lit=limited Lights that are not on all night. In some countries, these are specifically marked: See e.g. for Germany, Austria
• lit=disused: There are lights installed, but were never used.
• lit=interval For flashing lights, typically used on top of tall structures like towers, buildings, or bridges.
• lit=operating times: The schema of opening_hours is in use to document when the light is ON, most promimently lit=sunset-sunrise and lit=dusk-dawn. 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 muncipalities, 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 attempts for details in 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.

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