Key:minspeed
 minspeed
|
 |
| Description |
|---|
Specifies the minimum speed limit on a road, railway or waterway. Note that may refer to minimum achievable speed by vehicle or to minimum movement speed at given moment.  
|
| Group: restrictions |
| Used on these elements |
    |
| Useful combination |
|
| Status: de facto |
| Tools for this tag |
|
This Key allows the specification of a minimum speed limit. While this information can refer to both of
- the posted minimum allowed driving speed, likely with provisions for impeding traffic volumes and situations
- the minimum speed a vehicle must at least be able to attain as defined by local law
the effective outcome for known uses (routing) is that vehicles unable of achieving the tagged speed can not and may not use the tagged section of the road.
Units are in kilometeres/hour by default. Limits in miles per hour should get a mph postfix. The knots suffix should be used for speeds specified in knots (nautical miles per hour).
Directional speeds can be specified using the minspeed:forward and minspeed:backward tags. forward refers to the speed limit in the same direction as the OSM way, whilst backward refers to the opposite direction. This is inline with maxspeed=* tag.
Example
minspeed=100 (using default units of km/h)
minspeed=60 mph (explicitly stating units as mph instead of km/h)
Lanes
Where different speed limits are specified for each lane of a road those can be specified using minspeed:lanes=*. Each lane’s minimum speed has to be separated with the “|” character. The first minimum speed is the minimum speed of the leftmost lane (viewed from the direction of the OSM way), the second minimum speed is the speed of the lane right from the leftmost lane and so on until the rightmost lane.
Further if they should be specified for each driving direction separately the key minspeed:lanes:forward=* resp. minspeed:lanes:backward=* can be used, whereas lanes:forward applies to the minimum speed limit of the lanes for the same direction as the OSM way and lanes:backward to the minimum speed limit of the lanes of the opposite direction. See therefore also the Examples as well as the article about mapping individual lanes.
Examples
| Identification | Tagging | Remark |
|---|---|---|
 |
minspeed:lanes=80|50| | |
 |
minspeed:lanes:forward=50| | Example if there is no barrier in the middle, so is used only one line to represent the road and the line is pointing forward (up) - see forward and backward. |