render man_made=utility_pole the same as power=pole

[RedAuburn]

on OSMWiki | on TagInfo

power=pole is rendered as a dot, however man_made=utility_pole isn't rendered at all:

https://www.openstreetmap.org/node/11100234391#map=19/55.61522/-3.41057

i propose to render utility poles the same as power=pole.

[imagico]

Thanks for the suggestion.

We currently render power=pole not as a standalone feature but in context of a power=line/power=minor_line.

• power=pole has 13M uses
• power=line has 940k uses
• power=minor_line has 910k uses

Compared to that

• man_made=utility_pole has 200k uses
• telecom=line has 1.5k uses

As a standalone feature man_made=utility_pole has quite low practical relevance for the map user (especially also compared to things like highway=street_lamp - 3.9M uses) and is also not very intuitively understandable.

[RedAuburn]

We currently render power=pole not as a standalone feature but in context of a power=line/power=minor_line.

What about also rendering utility_pole only in context of a telecom/power line?

In the image above, the utility_pole is connected to a power=minor_line, and would give context to that power line.

utility_pole has fewer uses because it's newer, but it's a much better tag than power=pole as often there are multiple utilities on one pole (power, telecoms, etc.). The only reason power=pole is preferred for power poles is that it's a legacy tag, the same could be tagged as man_made=utility_pole + utility=power. It makes sense to treat them the same.

[imagico]

Are you saying that when the wiki says:

For poles carrying power cables/wires use power=pole instead.

that does not represent mapper consensus?

Note that combined tagging with man_made=utility_pole, power=pole and highway=street_lamp is possible (and practiced - 12k combinations with the former, 14k with the latter). The percentage this represents (6/7 percent) could very well represent the real world prevalence of combined use poles in the areas where these are mapped.