Talk:Tag:amenity=taxi

taxi or taxi_point?

The title and ValueDescription template of this article say "amenity=taxi_point", but other documentation (examples in this article and the Map Features article) say "amenity=taxi". What is the right tag value? --Ehabkost, some time on 2 July 2008 (UTC)

Guess it was my fault when i moved the page from the proposal page to the Tag:.... page. According to tagwatch atleast in Europe there are 386 amenity=taxi and 3 amenity=taxi_point

--Etric Celine 20:58, 2 July 2008 (UTC)

I have just renamed the article and all articles that pointed to it. --Ehabkost 21:01, 2 July 2008 (UTC)

'on' and 'off' instead of 'presence'

We have a fine working system for opening hours, why don't we use it here for the presence of the taxis instead of "presence" ?! --Lulu-Ann 15:55, 11 November 2008 (UTC)

That was my thought, too. Apart from opening_hours=*, there's also Key:access#Access_time_restrictions. I think that we can use the same pattern as opening_hours, but presence (meaning usual presence, according to experience) is something else than opening hours or access time restrictions (meaning that there must not be any taxi at other times). -- MapFlea 15:42, 12 November 2008 (UTC)

Some Taxi ranks are only licensed part-time, so i'd suggest that opening times could reflect this (legally plying for hire, therefore "open") and presence indicates the chances of catching a taxi at certain time assuming it is legal to ply for hire during those times? Juststupid (talk) 02:48, 13 January 2015 (UTC)

call box

amenity=taxi in my opinion is a stopping place for taxis. To distinguish those places with a call box I would tag it with call_box=yes or so. In Berlin it is usual that a stopping place for taxis is not for just one operator but for all. The call box now is for one operator and not for all. Any ideas? -- Serpens 22:37, 17 March 2009 (UTC)

Taxi shops?

A mini cab office

In London we have lots of crappy little shops on highstreets (the more scruffy cheap highstreets), where you can go and ask for a taxi (I guess... I've never done it that way myself) I think they also function as the office for the taxi service, with people on the phone/radio with maps telling drivers where to go. What is the tag for taxi shop? Maybe shop=taxi. -- Harry Wood 11:17, 25 May 2009 (UTC)

I agree, we need something to distinguish taxi ranks from taxi offices. There are ALLOT of these offices, and identifying them could be useful in the future when people start searching OSM information points (e.g., find the nearest taxi office and then get it's phone number).--http://chris-researchblog.blogspot.com/ 15:09, 27 October 2009 (UTC)

Or could be best to put amenity=taxi. After all... you can get a taxi from there. And then office=yes or something.

Here's a photo (right) Note: In London we also call them "mini cabs", and tend to use "taxi" to mean the official black taxis, we could have a tag for that distinction too, but not sure if it applies in the same way elsewhere

-- Harry Wood 23:32, 21 December 2010 (UTC)

London mini-cabs is only a problem for the booking offices - only official black taxis wait in taxi ranks.

I like the amenity=taxi together with taxi=office (normally with building=yes, I guess). There's lots of these outside London too, often near railway stations. --H2g2bob 22:40, 20 April 2012 (BST)

There is a two-tier system across the UK that has two classes of what most people call taxis. To qualify as an actual taxi in the legal use of the word it needs a sign on top that lights up that says "taxi", one in the side window that says "for hire" (if not lit, it's not for hire) and a meter. These are known as Hackney Carriages (or Public Hire vehicles) or taxis and do NOT need to be pre-booked. They use ranks. A door sticker denotes a Private Hire vehicle (legally NOT allowed to be called a taxi) that DOES need to be pre-booked. They use offices. The use of the words "Mini-Cab" indicates a private hire vehicle, but most often firms will run both private and public hire vehicles as a public hire vehicle (hack or taxi with a light on top) can ALSO undertake private hire (or pre-booked) work legally as well (so also CAN use offices). So two tiers, two tags? make sense? (as a taxi driver i don't like taxi shops - could too easily be confused with places to buy taxis - yes, they do exist :P) With an additional tag saying "pre-booked only" in some way?

(sorry, as a nub, i am not familiar with the formats for these things, but hopefully i made sense, even if i made a mess of editing this page?) Juststupid (talk) 03:05, 13 January 2015 (UTC)

Just as an update on this, taxi=* is now documented and used as an access tag. office=taxi has ~500 uses though, so i'd recommend that. Endim8 (talk) 20:25, 14 February 2024 (UTC)

Use on ways

This could be used on ways, too! --Lulu-Ann 08:31, 18 May 2009 (UTC)

Agreed. What about taxi feeder lanes, and areas where only taxis are allowed (usually, but not always restricted to certain times)? How can these be shown better than they are currently? Juststupid (talk) 02:54, 13 January 2015 (UTC)

Motorcycles?

Here in Brazil, specially in near the slums, there are lots of so called "Moto Táxi", literally motorcycle-taxi. How would you tag those? I'm using amenity=taxi + vehicle=motorcycle. Better suggestions? --Nighto 17:49, 30 June 2009 (UTC)

amenity=taxi + motorcycle = only? --Westnordost (talk) 10:33, 16 August 2014 (UTC)

Created taxi_type=* and taxi_type=motorcycle which is the de facto way of tagging motorcycle taxi stands after amenity=motorcycle_taxi proposal was rejected.--Nighto (talk) 16:33, 16 December 2022 (UTC)

Rickshaws, cycle rickshaws and auto rickshaws

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pulled_rickshaw http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cycle_rickshaw http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Auto_rickshaw

What about those? There is not even a access-tag for these yet.

In my opinion it is not required to distinguish every vehicle used as a taxi, since the major difference between them is besides their capacity the achievable range. Following this thought I set the range to either high or low, mapped that to the vehicle either having an engine or not and further on to the available tags "motorcycle" and "motorcar". So for example a place for bicycle taxis only I simply tag motorcycle=no and motorcar=no. Any opinions on that? --Noname (talk) 11:53, 3 November 2014 (UTC)

That doesn't work, because if you want an automobile taxi, you don't want a motorcycle or tricycle. It's like the difference between renting a car and renting a bus or a heavy good vehicle. Walking out of a train station with kids and luggage, you probably need a automobile, but if you want to get through the traffic quickly in Jakarta or Bangkok, a motorcycle is much faster and cheaper for one person with a small amount of luggage. These should be different features like amenity=motorcycle_taxi --Jeisenbe (talk) 00:29, 17 September 2019 (UTC)

Motorcar=no?

Currently the page proposes to use motorcar=no etc for situations where the taxi is not a car. I find that confusing, since that is an access-prohibition tag, and is being misused for classifiction of the taxi type. --Polarbear w (talk) 12:54, 4 January 2019 (UTC)

Yes, that seems like a bad idea. I'll be bold and remove that. JesseFW (talk) 07:39, 5 January 2019 (UTC)

I've marked that (and motorcycle=yes, which has the same problem) as deprecated. There are less than 300 uses of them (out of over 18,000 uses of amenity=taxi), so I think it's fine to deprecate them. JesseFW (talk) 07:47, 5 January 2019 (UTC)

I do not see (such) a problem with this because it's meaning is not ambiguous. Also, a clothes store for women only would also be tagged with access-like tags (woman=only) or similar, same with toilets. A meaningful tag for auto-rickshaws AKA tuk-tuks would be "tricycle". Anyway, if you find this tagging is not good, can you provide an alternative? amenity=motorcycle_taxi etc.?

Picture of motorcycle taxi stand: [1], picture of auto rickshaw stand: [2] --Westnordost (talk) 16:29, 28 April 2019 (UTC)

Er, see the discussion directly below this for the proposed alternative? JesseFW (talk) 18:34, 28 April 2019 (UTC)

Yes, okay --Westnordost (talk) 19:07, 28 April 2019 (UTC)

taxis no being passenger cars

Suitable tagging for such situations had been discussed on the tagging list. motorcar=yes|no or motorcycle=yes|no was considered problematic since it collides with access tags. The key taxi=* is also used as an access tag. As the intention is to characterise the type to the taxi vehicle, the following was proposed:
taxi_vehicle=car;motorcycle;rickshaw;bicitaxi;pedicab;tuktuk;golf_cart;water_taxi;air_taxi; etc
With no vehicle tagged, car should be assumed for compatibility. --Polarbear w (talk) 00:17, 8 January 2019 (UTC)

Or, amenity=motorcycle_taxi, amenity=tricycle_taxi (tuktuk/auto rickshaw), amenity=bicycle_taxi (cycle rickshaw/ pedicab/...)? Not sure if golf_cart;water_taxi;air_taxi is relevant. Why I think extra top-level tags are better: Software compatibility. Software that does not know/parse taxi_vehicle=* would interpret any taxi stand as a normal taxi stand, even though a pedicab stand would be something very different from a normal taxi stand --Westnordost (talk) 16:35, 28 April 2019 (UTC)

I think it's a mistake to use amenity=taxi for motorcycle taxis and tricycles (pedicabs). If you walk out of a train station to the nearest amenity=taxi with your family and luggage, you will be quite surprised to find only motorcycles, or only tricycles. I think we should use new tags, such as amenity=motorcycle_taxi and amenity=pedicab. --Jeisenbe (talk) 00:27, 17 September 2019 (UTC)