Add paid parking operator quest

[zyphlar]

General

Affected tag(s) to be modified/added: operator

Question asked: Who operates this parking lot?

By collecting information about who parking fees are paid to, richer OSM parking experiences can be enabled, i.e. a government or company name can be matched with known entities and online payment options can more easily be presented, or research reports on private vs public parking can more easily be created. Travelers can then research parking ahead of time in a GPS app, and armchair mappers can look up operator websites for further details. (In dense urban environments it can be very important to know if a lot is related to the venue you're visiting, or if they're a brand name you trust, etc.)

By comparison, asking surveyors what type of parking a lot is and what surface it has is quite spammy: that information is almost always visible from decent satellite imagery. But only a surveyor will be able to tell if a parking lot is paid, and if so what its operator is.

Checklist

Checklist for quest suggestions (see guidelines):

• [x] 🚧 To be added tag is established and has a useful purpose
• [x] 🤔 Any answer the user can give must have an equivalent tagging (Quest should not reappear to other users when solved by one)
• [x] 🐿️ Easily answerable by any pedestrian from the outside but a survey is necessary
• [x] 💤 Not an overwhelming percentage of quests have the same answer (No spam)
• [x] 🕓 Applies to a reasonable number of map data (Worth the effort)

Ideas for implementation

By only asking for this information for parking lots we already know have a fee associated, we can limit spam.

Element selection:

[out:json][timeout:25];
nwr["fee"]["fee"!="no"]["amenity"="parking"]["operator"!~".*"]({{bbox}});
out geom;

Proposed UI:

---

🅿️ Who operates this parking lot?

(operator name)

Can't Say...

---

[matkoniecz]

and if so what its operator is.

not always, branding may mismatch actual operator or be completely unsigned (in Poland it is rarely signed and even branding of paid parkings is rare)

[zyphlar]

It may be worth locking by region but if you're paying for parking in America there's usually some indication of who you're paying. (I originally wanted to ask for operator on all parking but I realized that for most cases that would be a guess... except for example when there's an app or website or credit card involved in which case usually there's some indication.)

In America even if you're paying an unsigned automated guard shack it's pretty obvious what venue is charging you (a mall or airport or convention hall) and even if you're living in 1980 and pushing dollar bills into a slot they'll usually have some basic indication of the lot name or company ("ParkMatic Systems" etc) because inevitably someone will have an issue and need to contact an owner (stolen or towed car, payment issue, lawsuits, the lot is on fire, etc.) Almost every paid lot will have some kind of disclaimer visible limiting the lot's liability for things like break-ins, and that'll usually indicate the owner somehow.

How is it elsewhere, you just pay money to an anonymous lot owner and hope for the best?

[mnalis]

It may be worth locking by region but if you're paying for parking in America there's usually some indication of who you're paying

So, "🐿️ Easily answerable by any pedestrian from the outside" is the predominant case in all of USA states?

because inevitably someone will have an issue and need to contact an owner

Wouldn't it be more useful to ask for phone=* (or even website=* or wikidata=*) rather then (or in addition to?) operator=*? If one is in such emergency, they most probably want to call that phone immediately, rather then be forced to do web searches in hopes of finding correct operator phone (BTW, SCEE fork of SC does have the configurable quest which you can set to ask phone=* for parking lots or anything else)

How is it elsewhere, you just pay money to an anonymous lot owner and hope for the best?

In Croatia, most payed parkings I'm aware of fall in one of few categories:

• surface parkings in cities are in vast majority of cases owned exclusively by municipality (in which case it would likely be spammy asking for the operators)
• underground parkings in cities, which are often private; and AFAIR operator is usually not signed on the outside (it would likely be shown on the parking ticket machine near the lift-gate itself when you commit to parking there; and will almost definitely be shown on the parking ticket when you push the button). owner=* is probably usually the owner of the building in which the parking is situated (e.g. shopping mall, cinema complex, ...) . operator=* I'm not sure about but is possibly outsourced (but may also possibly be the same as the owner).
• parkings inside specific areas where operator is obvious (i.e. parking inside hotel complex)
• on summer-tourism-based seaside towns; private and heavily charged small parkings (usually 1-3 cars) in owner's private garage / garden front). You've booked those months in advance with owner (via Internet/phone), so you know who to contact.

Disclaimer: I'm not a car owner so I haven't payed it much attention, so there might be other cases too.

While those "rules" are not hard (e.g. some quests are included but disabled by default when it requires going inside, or only enabled in some countries), there is a good reason for them - one wants for StreetComplete mappers to have fun and quick and easy questions, and not frustrating / complicated ones - those often end up in SCEE instead, if the proponent strongly feels that data is useful but the quest ends up not being a good fit for vanilla SC).

[zyphlar]

Seems like our countries are similar then. I think that yes the name of the company or government running paid parking (not just any public surface lot but one with a mechanism for collecting payment) will be as visible or more visible than collecting opening hours, restroom details, wheelchair accessibility, types of recycling collected, postal collection times, bridge weight limits, payment/kosher/halal/vegetarian information, etc. It's true that in many areas one company or government will have a monopoly on parking, but those caveats apply to all quests and areas (find me a significant road in America thats not asphalt and I'll be surprised.) It's also easy to assume: if you know everything in your area is city parking, then you fill out quests just like as if every street was asphalt and every crosswalk was marked.

Surely we could also ask about parking phone or website, those are equivalent in my eyes (website better than phone personally, since googling phone numbers is often full of useless spam) but I think it's more likely that operator is easier to find or guess (we could assume City of _____ or display a group-by of the top 10 values in the area in many cases) -- I can tell you easily with local knowledge (not visible to armchair mappers outside my area) that my city owns and operates most of the parking, but a good chunk really will require surveying and that's what this quest is about, easily surveying and storing those facts and exceptions just like we want to survey and store business opening hours and baby changing tables.

By comparison it would be hard to impossible to guess phone or website, which must be entered precisely every time to be valuable. If operator has some variability thats ok, it can be homogenized remotely and any understandable value will still be useful. Ideally the website would be a specific webpage for the specific lot, too, which is even harder to guess and research without standing and typing for a long time. So if we have any contact/operator information about a parking lot I think the name is the first piece of information to obtain. (If we want to make this a triple-optional quest where the user is presented with the ability to store operator OR phone OR website that'd be great, just more complex IMO.)

I don't think we can ask for wikidata: my attempts to get a small local chain of shops added to wiki were strongly opposed because it wasn't notable enough, and that isn't information surveyors have available when in the field. They'd have to search the operator's name on Wikidata to get that info and fight with Wiki volunteers in the very likely case that no ID yet exists.

Some of the oddball edge cases you mention are actually the most important to map: in touristy or dense or odd areas, it's easy to try and plan a visit but find it difficult to park in an allowed area, and the particular ownership (operation) of a lot isn't obvious at first. I just spent weeks trying to find street parking when shopping for example, only to find out that the store I was visiting had reserved spots around the side in an otherwise private lot. Other times lots are right next to each other and on one side of concrete is legal, the other side isn't, and without local knowledge or a good map you won't realize until you're there and desperate.

[1ec5]

I don't think we can ask for wikidata: my attempts to get a small local chain of shops added to wiki were strongly opposed because it wasn't notable enough, and that isn't information surveyors have available when in the field. They'd have to search the operator's name on Wikidata to get that info and fight with Wiki volunteers in the very likely case that no ID yet exists.

The suggestion above was about wikidata, which I agree would be too much to ask for, because most individual parking lots and garages aren’t notable enough for even Wikidata. But an operator or brand of a paid lot probably is. name-suggestion-index already has quite a few, backed by Wikidata. Still, there’s no mechanism for StreetComplete to fetch results from Wikidata anyways – this hampered my dreams of a quest about flags in #2705.

So, "🐿️ Easily answerable by any pedestrian from the outside" is the predominant case in all of USA states?

I think it would depend on the kind of parking facility. Keep in mind that amenity=parking is tagged on various kinds of facilities, ranging from a multi-story parking garage to a micromapped row of curbside street parking spaces. A garage is very likely to have its operator signposted at the entrance, and a surface lot probably will have it either at the entrance or the payment stall (which you can walk up to), so you know who to contact about towing, theft, overcharging, etc.

There are a couple edge cases to be aware of. Some garages and surface lots rent out spaces on a long-term basis; as almost private facilities, they tend to have less commercial signage. In large cities, hotels and similar venues have contracted out their parking facilities to a third party, which might allow non-customers to park for a fee. You may not know the third party from a field survey; I’ve parked at one whose operator was only listed on the website.

For street parking, the operator may or may not be posted on the payment kiosk or parking meters. Traditionally, municipal owner-operators were never signposted, but the trend over the last decade has been for larger cities to create their own parking brands and for smaller cities to contract with companies that have their own brands – and this typically applies to both street parking and garages.

[westnordost]

So, I guess it could be enabled at least in the US for

amenity = parking
and parking ~ underground|multi-storey|surface
and fee = yes
and access !~ no|private

while for parking=lane and parking=street_side it may be too spammy, even in the US.

[1ec5]

That sounds good to me. One edge case would be access=customers, which tends to occur in front of a strip mall or anywhere a business might build a parking lot just for their own customers. In these situations, the operator might be explicitly signposted on the sign at the lot entrance, beside the towing company’s name, or it might not be posted because that’s what the business’s main sign is for.

Even though there isn’t dedicated signage for the operator in this case, I think operator is especially useful for distinguishing one shop’s lot from a neighboring shop’s lot. I’ve encountered many situations where a shop owner is especially wary of the neighbor’s customers overflowing onto their lot and would waste no time in having them towed. Perhaps these lots can still be part of the quest, as long as the instructions are clear that the shop’s main signage can be considered?

[zyphlar]

The regex above looks good, for the customer-only case careful wording could help people work around the confusion. Maybe instead of "Who operates this parking lot" we could ask "who controls this parking lot?" (Which company/government/entity)

That way it's a little more obvious that we're not so much concerned with the legal aspects of who owns or is contracted to staff a parking area, as much as the name of the place that the parking is for / the name of the people you'd call if you had any issues. ParkCo might be the "operator" of a mall parking garage but it's ultimately usually the mall taking responsibility for its operation and any logos on equipment or uniforms tend to be incidental (they could change at any time and nobody would notice.) I'd want to avoid logging towing company info as much as possible, since it's sort of a transient artifact of the lot moreso than the entity attached to and making decisions about the lot.

I agree that for now parking tagged on a street way is too nebulous and difficult to make a quest. But "is this the dentist parking lot or the restaurant lot" is a good and important question to be asking. "I can't tell (it's multiple lots)" would be a good signal to survey also.

[westnordost]

@1ec5 but usually at strip malls, the whole parking lot is mapped as one large parking area, not chipped up into smaller lots each in front of each shop, isn't it?

In general, I guess the question should also not be asked in places where the chance that the parking would need to be chopped up into smaller areas to properly answer the question is likely. But, uh, if access=customers is a good indicator for that, I don't know.

[zyphlar]

Parking lot tagging is generally relatively poor which is what I hope to help improve. I think simply offering the third option of "multiple/idk" would help highlight lots that need more attention. Again I only want to focus on paid lots to start with, so someone will be needing to collect the payment and that's usually somewhat obvious. The vast majority of lots in America are unpaid for customers only, but I don't need to be asking about whether Walmart or Home Depot or McDonald's operates those lots and it's rarely very contentious anyway. Might as well start small and doable with information that can only be gathered on the ground.

[mnalis]

So, I guess it could be enabled at least in the US for

Or perhaps allowed everywhere (but maybe disabled by default)? So users could choose what they prefer, as the spamminess seems to vary even inside single country...

For example, parking ~ underground|multi-storey and fee=yes would likely not be spammy anywhere in Croatia (although obviously mostly only car users would be likely to go survey such quests) so should be OK, but |surface part probably would be too spammy in all bigger cities here -- at least in capital of Zagreb it would likely be >99% cases of operator=Zagreb parking AFAICT. And while I like gamification in SC quite much, I'm not so desperate to want more grinding - I'd rather collect more useful data.

Also, it would probably make sense to exclude parkings having parking:zone=* tag, as those are usually set on municipality parkings to indicate zones with different rules (max stay time, prices etc). While not always set where it could/should; where it exists it would reduce the spamminess, helping the quest more likely to be enabled by default.

[mnalis]

I think simply offering the third option of "multiple/idk" would help highlight lots that need more attention

@zyphlar As for that IDK , every quest in StreetComplete has Other answers / Can't say... / Leave note option; which already allows users to highlight lots (or anything else) that need more attention... You can even attach pictures to better explain the issue if you want.

Again I only want to focus on paid lots to start with, so someone will be needing to collect the payment and that's usually somewhat obvious

Yeah, there already exist StreetComplete quest for parking fee, so that part is covered already.

[zyphlar]

but |surface part probably would be too spammy in all bigger cities here -- at least in capital of Zagreb it would likely be >99% cases of operator=Zagreb parking AFAICT.

Surely it couldn't be nearly as spammy as asking for the surface of each road, or what type of lot each parking lot is though, right? I'd rather have that $Cityname Parking data (which is hard to map from home, much harder than surface=asphalt which is 99% of all modern roads) than not have it.

[1ec5]

Oh, I overlooked the fee=yes in the suggested tags. Strip malls and other suburban-style parking lots won’t be an issue at all. Paid lots are unheard of in that context, because a typical suburban retailer wants to reduce as much friction as possible, and they’ve already overbuilt enough spaces that there’s no scarcity to charge for.

For what it’s worth, a strip mall parking lot would be mapped as one whole area, even if certain spaces are reserved for certain tenants. Those reservations are appropriately tagged on individual amenity=parking_space features.

[mnalis]

Surely it couldn't be nearly as spammy as asking for the surface of each road,

Yes, it can be much more spammy. I've given example of Zagreb, where over 99% (actually, probably closer to 99.9%) would have the same answer for car parking operator. Note that, for comparison:

• surface is not asked for each road, but only for a subset of them. In particular, where it is deemed to be spammy (e.g. highway=motorway mostly being surface=asphalt), the surface quest is deliberately not being asked.
• surface of the roads is not really spammy. Even if you look only at bigger roads (e.g. highway=primary) there are over 10% of them which are tagged with surface which is not asphalt. For lesser roads (like highway=residential), there are more than 50% which are tagged with surface which is not asphalt.

or what type of lot each parking lot is though, right?

Even the most popular parking=* type (i.e. parking=surface) is only 75% of the answers. That is lot less then 99%, thus not very spammy at all.

I'd rather have that $Cityname Parking data (which is hard to map from home, much harder than surface=asphalt which is 99% of all modern roads) than not have it.

Perhaps in your location all roads are modern and 99% of them are "of course" asphalt. But as shown above, taginfo shows that is not the case globally -- some mapper from some other poorer country might equally well claim that "of course 99% of roads are dirt roads" (and be equally wrong). The OSM has shown me so much diversity that I never dreamt of, that I've become averse to even using the phrase "of course" :smile_cat:

The issue is that StreetComplete quests are made for whole world. In other words, currently the quest must have the same criteria for all countries. Only thing we can limit is not to ask quest in some countries at all. But if the quest is asked, it must ask the same question on same selection of elements.

But don't get me wrong - I understand that you care about that particular data, and I support you fully in your desire to improve OSM data (even if I personally probably won't be solving much quests which are of use to car-drivers only, since I'm not in that group). But I do try to offer opinions how to best implement such quests in StreetComplete, in order not to overwhelm average StreetComplete user (because, in my experience, if they feel they are being asked a lot of questions that they themselves do not see much use for, or which feel spammy, they'll just give up on using the app altogether, to everyone's detriment).

[zyphlar]

I hear you, but I don't think it's a problem. Overpass says there's about 200 surface parking lots in central Zagreb and only about 60 fee=yes surface lots. Even if 90% of those are city operated, I think knowing whether they're city or private lots is worthwhile. The same area has more streets than Overpass wants to return, so I don't think it can count as spam.

I'm not going to be asking about street parking conditions right now, just paid parking lots.

Jan 19, 2024 7:05:15 PM Matija Nalis @.***>:

Surely it couldn't be nearly as spammy as asking for the surface of each road,

Yes, it can be much more spammy. I've given example of Zagreb, where over 99% (actually, probably closer to 99.9%) would have the same answer for car parking operator.

• surface is not asked for each road, but only for a subset of them[https://github.com/streetcomplete/StreetComplete/blob/c18d8675556657288fd968d1f211a759ab9ad957/app/src/main/java/de/westnordost/streetcomplete/quests/surface/AddRoadSurface.kt#L17-L38]. In particular, where it is deemed to be spammy (e.g. highway=motorway mostly being surface=asphalt), the surface quest is deliberately not being asked.
• surface of the roads is not really spammy. Even if you look only at bigger roads (e.g. highway=primary) there are over 10% of them which are tagged with surface which is not asphalt[https://taginfo.openstreetmap.org/tags/highway=primary#combinations]. For lesser roads (like highway=residential), there are more than 50% which are tagged with surface which is not asphalt[https://taginfo.openstreetmap.org/tags/highway=residential#combinations].

or what type of lot each parking lot is though, right?

Even the most popular *parking=** type (i.e. parking=surface[https://taginfo.openstreetmap.org/tags/parking=surface]) is only 75% of the answers. That is lot less then 99%, thus not very spammy[https://github.com/streetcomplete/StreetComplete/blob/master/QUEST_GUIDELINES.md] at all.

I'd rather have that $Cityname Parking data (which is hard to map from home, much harder than surface=asphalt which is 99% of all modern roads) than not have it.

Perhaps in your location all roads are modern and 99% of them are /"of course"/ asphalt. But as shown above, taginfo shows that is not the case globally -- some mapper from some other poorer country might equally well claim that /"of course 99% of roads are dirt roads"/ (and be equally wrong). The OSM has shown me so much diversity that I never dreamt of, that I've become averse to even using the phrase /"of course"/ 😸

The issue is that StreetComplete quests are made for whole world. In other words, currently the quest must have the same criteria for all countries. Only thing we can limit is not to ask quest in some countries at all. But if the quest is asked, it must ask the same question on same selection of elements.

But don't get me wrong - I understand that you care about that particular data, and I support you fully in your desire to improve OSM data (even if I personally probably won't be solving much quests which are of use to car-drivers only, since I'm not in that group). But I do try to offer opinions how to best implement such quests in StreetComplete, in order not to overwhelm average StreetComplete user (because, in my experience, if they feel they are being asked a lot of questions that they themselves do not see much use for, or which feel spammy, they'll just give up on using the app altogether, to everyone's detriment).

— Reply to this email directly, view it on GitHub[https://github.com/streetcomplete/StreetComplete/issues/5425#issuecomment-1901693136], or unsubscribe[https://github.com/notifications/unsubscribe-auth/AAAL2MTBPM5Z4HGOLWRQQ73YPMX6RAVCNFSM6AAAAABBFG24AKVHI2DSMVQWIX3LMV43OSLTON2WKQ3PNVWWK3TUHMYTSMBRGY4TGMJTGY]. You are receiving this because you were mentioned. [Tracking image][https://github.com/notifications/beacon/AAAL2MX2QE3B5JIMTKTSKWDYPMX6RA5CNFSM6AAAAABBFG24AKWGG33NNVSW45C7OR4XAZNMJFZXG5LFINXW23LFNZ2KUY3PNVWWK3TUL5UWJTTRLGENA.gif]

[thany]

Surely it couldn't be nearly as spammy as asking for the surface of each road, or what type of lot each parking lot is though, right? I'd rather have that $Cityname Parking data (which is hard to map from home, much harder than surface=asphalt which is 99% of all modern roads) than not have it.

You don't realise how many roads (streets, actually, big difference) in Europe and especially The Netherlands, are in fact paved. This because we have a thing called the "design speed". On a street that is paved, drivers naturally drive slower, because anything above 30 makes a right racket, and taking a speed bump made for a 30-zone at 50 is going to sound really expensive.

The point is, many streets are not asphalt. This is only the case in countries that are, what I affectionately call, addicted to asphalt. Japan and South Korea are such countries. The USA as well, although they do concrete as well, iinm. But here, in The Netherlands, while most roads are indeed asphalt, most streets are paved. And there are many more streets than roads.

[zyphlar]

@thany I fully understand! Countries are different. If there is a country where 99% of all parking is government operated then maybe the quest is disabled there. My point is that the overwhelming majority of roads are asphalt in America yet that quest is valid, so I don't think this quest is any more spammy than what already exists.