Reporter: hadw
[Submitted to the original trac issue database at 10.22am, Monday, 9th September 2013]

Because it is now easy to add lots of detailed features, by tracing, most of which are private, the map is getting cluttered with detail that gets in the way of finding public features. In particular this applies to amenity=parking and highway=footway, but also applies, to a lesser extent, to highway=service;service=driveway

I would suggest that private features should not be rendered at all at all but the highest zoom levels, with the exact cutoff depending on the feature. Examples, at the time of writing, are footpaths to flats in Wallington, Surrey, which at [http://www.openstreetmap.org/#map=18/51.35910/-0.15307 highish zoom levels] make it difficult to spot the thin red dashed public footpath amongst the thick pink ones, and, at [http://www.openstreetmap.org/#map=15/51.3567/-0.1484 lower ones], hide the true landuse colour with a sea of pink.

The [http://www.openstreetmap.org/?mlat=51.3603&mlon=-0.1520#map=15/51.3603/-0.1520 last one] also shows a problem with parking. The yellow area, near the station, is actually four different car parks, only one could be considered public (the station one). The map implies a much bigger car park than is really available.

Although moving slightly North West shows an example of over-mapping car parks, I think a better example is [http://www.openstreetmap.org/#map=16/51.6047/-0.2694 Burnt Oak]. Even if these were properly marked for access (much more difficult than tracing them with Bing, as you actually need to look at them on the ground), there would still be a sea of toned town Ps, and large areas of yellow generating a lot of noise on the map.