Reporter: ToeBee
[Submitted to the original trac issue database at 7.32pm, Wednesday, 6th October 2010]

Currently a plain waterway=river way only gets rendered in z12-z18. Residential roads get rendered out to z10 which makes the map look pretty odd in z10 and z11 as roads suddenly stop for no apparent reason.

According to the wiki, rivers wider than 12m should have river banks traced (which get rendered to z6 I think). Personally I think 12m is still a little narrow to have to do riverbanks for but even leaving that argument aside, residential roads are typically no more than 8m wide and yet they still get rendered to z10. In my opinion a river that affects all the roads along it should be displayed at least as prominently on the map as residential roads. Some of the state highways around here aren't even 12m wide and they get rendered out to z9. Granted, this is Openstreetmap... but still.

Relatedly, waterway=stream also seems to be rendered out to z12 (or maybe 13? The example I have handy is obscured at z13) which means there is no difference in rendering between streams and rivers which seems odd as well. Streams are less likely to terminate roads so they are less important to a street map.

Example link:
http://www.openstreetmap.org/?lat=39.59&lon=-96.582&zoom=11&layers=M

I traced the riverbank in the southern county but not in the northern county. You can still clearly see the path of the river in the northern county because of the roads it disrupts but the river itself is conspicuously absent and yet you have to zoom in to about z15 to see any appreciable difference between the rendering of the river and the riverbank.