Proposal talk:Escalator

direction of speedwalks (escalators without incline)

How do we mark the direction for the "skywalk" value? They have a direction, too, it's just an entirely horizontal rather than vertical one. --Tordanik 13:09, 28 April 2009 (UTC)

Right, we need a "in the same way as the arrow" and "in the opposite direction as the arrow". Any ideas? "Along" and "opposite" ? --Lulu-Ann 18:49, 29 April 2009 (UTC)

I find it rather strange to tag something that allows you to move horizontally and that has an even surface as steps. And besides, where is the name 'skywalk' coming from? Wikipedia doesn't list this parcticular meaning (which doesn't have to mean anything, but still). --Driver2 20:24, 29 April 2009 (UTC)

The correct term seems to be "speedwalk". I'll correct it. --Lulu-Ann 10:13, 7 May 2009 (UTC)

Should we use highway=escalator for this?

There are two arguments that come to mind, why we should use an own highway-Tag for escalators:

• Escalators, while looking pretty similiar to regular steps, might not always be (easily) usable in both directions. If renderers or routers for some reasons don't look at the escalator-Tag, there could be problems.
• If we use escalator also for moving walkways of any kind (horizontal movement), using highway=steps could be even more misleading (again if users ignore the escalator-Tags and thus expect normal steps).

With highway=escalator, users would immediately know that they are not dealing with ordinary steps and have to expect some more Tags that define the type and direction of movement. It could of course take some time for renderers to adopt highway=escalator, so escalators won't be rendered at all for now, but at least they won't be rendered wrong (or rather misleading). --Driver2 20:38, 29 April 2009 (UTC)

Thinking about this, I indeed tend to support highway=escalator. Using highway=steps redefines the meaning of the steps value somewhat (it now can be used for escalators, too), which isn't good practice. If we use a new tag, we can be sure that every application that handles escalators is fully aware of what they are. It also saves one tag compared with the current solution (highway=escalator instead of highway=steps + escalator=yes). --Tordanik 08:28, 30 April 2009 (UTC)

I support highway=escalator for the same reasons given. FYI, there is a huge set of escalators going up through Mid-Levels in Hong Kong that would benefit from this tag and would make a big impact on pedestrian routing calculations. MikeCollinson 10:09, 21 May 2009 (UTC)

Alternative proposal

I'd like to suggest an alternative proposal for tagging escalators: Proposed_features/Conveyor. It takes into account the criticism expressed above ("Should we use highway=escalator for this?") and tries to cover both escalators and moving walkways. Feedback is welcome. --Tordanik 17:20, 23 August 2009 (UTC)