Contrary to common practice, I hold (after much deliberation and consideration) that the best way to map runways is to make them an area.
One reason is that everybody and their dog, including our very own dearest wiki, defines a runway as being an area, with various elaboration. Example from our own wiki: [quote]A runway is a defined rectangular area on a land aerodrome (aeroway=aerodrome) prepared for the landing and take-off of aeroplanes. [/quote].
The eternal counter-argument is the parallelism to ways, railways, waterways and perhaps more; but I hold this argument to be non-valid. Unlike all the other categories, runways can NOT be joined to create routes. An aviator’s route planning mentions aerodromes and optionally other waypoints, navaids, visual reference points, but never runways. So that there is really no point in defining a runway as a way, or any other linear element.
I therefore strongly oppose both the mapping of runways as linear elements, and the additional use of area:runway or any such. The latter are totally redundant, and thus a waste of valuable resouces, storage capacity in the first place.
I am not the only mapper with this opinion, even less am I the first; many French ultralight terrains and their runways (“Base ULM”) have been mapped this way, and never been questioned. I find them perfectly satisfactory, too. For just one example among many, see [url] osm.org/way/587820283 [/url]