Improve the data
Chairlifts, Gondolas, and T-Bars: Ski Lift Types Explained
Chair lifts lead the tagged count. Platters, carpets, and T-bars still move most of the small hills.
OSM stores lifts as aerialway=* ways. The analyzer rolls them into lift_types like chair lift: 4, magic carpet: 2. Across downhill rows in this file, chair lifts lead, then platters, magic carpets, T-bars, drag lifts, gondolas, rope tows, cable cars. The map is Bristol, which the pipeline post already used: chairs on a New York hill, not a postcard gondola.
Bristol lifts on the wiki stack.
Step 1. The global tagged count
Chairs are the workhorse. Platters and T-bars still move Alps-sized volume on small hills. Carpets are how first-timers get up a twenty-foot slope. Gondolas are rarer than people who ski on TV think. Cable cars are rarer still. If a hill’s string is all gondola and no carpet, look at who that hill was built for.
Sums parsed from lift_types.
Step 2. Tag the way, not the brand
A detachable quad is still aerialway=chair_lift plus aerialway:occupancy and aerialway:detachable=yes. A gondola is aerialway=gondola. A T-bar is aerialway=t-bar. Mixing those, or drawing the same lift twice, is how counts inflate. The tagging guide at Montage walks the geometry. Copy those tags. Do not invent a new key for “high-speed six-pack.”
Montage. Same lift tagging rules as any other hill.
Step 3. Small hills run on surface lifts
Chapman Hill’s two lifts are the other end of the chart. Rope tows and carpets are easy to miss in OSM if you only map what looks like a tower. Miss them and the analyzed row looks like a hill with trails and no uphill. That is a pipeline row people then call “incomplete data” when the mapper skipped the carpet.
Chapman Hill. Two lifts. Map both or the row lies.
Step 4. Gondolas live in the mega polygons
The 3 Valleys is where gondolas and chairs stack up in one view. That is not “better.” It is a different transport problem: valleys, villages, and long links. Count lift type against the trip you are taking. A T-bar at a municipal hill and a gondola at Courchevel are both correct tags.
The 3 Valleys. Many aerialways, same OSM keys.