Proposal talk:Floodway

I propose that floodways be rendered the same as canals, but feel that the difference in purpose between the two is significant enough that they should be tagged distinctly. Dshpak 15:58, 21 April 2007 (BST)

You mean like the storm channels in LA?, aren't those covered by waterway=drain? ShakespeareFan00 21:22, 19 February 2008 (UTC)

What about areas reserved for flood control? There is an area known as the causeway (pictures and more information) that serves as flood relief for the Sacramento area. It is a flood bypass. Could the proposal be extended to include areas as well as linear selections? Seasonal Lake doesn't seem to really cover it as the land is mixed use as both farmland and flood control.

Sounds reasonable. Differentiated from a drain in that its purpose is specialized or emergency, rather than for routine or occasional drainage. I would add:

• Could be applied to a path (for a narrow linear feature, or with low resolution data) or an area (for an area feature, or a wide linear feature, as with waterway=river wider than 12 m).
• Could apply to floodwater storage, bypass, or diversion features.

I'd suggest rendering with a dotted blue line or outline, while permanent features contained within the floodway area could be tagged with more usual stream, drain, or canal tags. The Red River Floodway, for example, has roadways and even a ski slope in it, so it shouldn't be rendered as solid blue. It also has a much smaller central drainage ditch that flows year-round. —Michael Z. 2011-04-09 17:03 z