To explicitly mark a feature to be present on both sides of the road, both is used. left means the left-hand side of the way when looking in the forward direction (as defined above), while right means the right-hand side also when looking in the same direction. The tag values (or key suffixes) left and right describe a side of a way, but not a direction along the way. If used as a suffix, it is placed at the end of the key but still in front of the suffix of the Conditional restrictions syntax. Under certain circumstances an additional forward or backward behind both_ways is needed. This should not be used to mean "forward and backward", as this is the default meaning of all un-suffixed keys. The third option both_ways is used for the lane in the middle of the road that is used in both directions (e.g. A common case is for example lanes= 3, lanes:forward= 1, lanes:backward= 2, The lanes=* tag is another good example of a direction-dependent feature: A road with several lanes can have a different number of lanes for traffic in each direction. The oneway= yes tag is a good example of a direction-dependent feature: if this tag is added to a way, it becomes a one-way in the forward direction, but the oneway= -1 tag means the same way drawn in the reverse direction so that the one-way is in the backward direction.
#Which is right and left on a truck code#
The code forward means the direction in which the way is drawn in OpenStreetMap, while backward means the opposite direction.
The tag values (or key suffixes) forward and backward describe a direction along a way, but not a side of the way. It is important to know the difference between the terms forward/ backward and left/ right when they are used as tag key suffixes (or in some tag values) indicating a direction or side relative to a way.