OpenStreetMap
I've just added a service road and a track out in the desert along the Bagdad highway in Syria. One of the ways of navigating out in the desert is using landmarks and the mobile phone towers are great for this purpose... so it would be good to be able to tag these properly on the map.
Unfortunately I can't see a suitable key for referencing these towers... any ideas?
I've also tidied up the cycle tracks around Damascus and I'm about to add a couple of fire stations since I noticed there's a key for these.
Discussion
Comment from David Dean on 27 May 2009 at 08:20
http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Tag:man_made%3Dtower
Comment from davidearl on 27 May 2009 at 13:30
Though it's not in Map_features, man_made=mast is recognised by JOSM (i.e. there's an icon for it) and it is rendered on Mapnik (eg http://www.openstreetmap.org/?lat=52.60182&lon=0.37385&zoom=17&layers=B000FTF)
I think tower is a rather more substantial thing than a mobile phone mast (like a TV transmitter or the Eiffel Tower).
Comment from c2r on 27 May 2009 at 21:31
I'd tend to agree that there should be a way of differentiating between a TV transmitter and a smaller 'mast' as TV transmitters have line of sight for many miles as they are massive, whereas mobile phone masts would only be useful for localised navigation...
Comment from jonnymaserati on 30 May 2009 at 13:04
Guys
Thanks for the feedback. The mobile phone towers in the desert are generally pretty big. They're set about 500 m from the road and are to give road coverage so have to be pretty big so that they only have to build one every 20km or so. I'd say they're 20 to 30m high.
So you can imagine they're pretty visible from the road and good markers.