Re: [OSM-talk] Misclassified roads
Martijn van Oosterhout schrieb: On Fri, Jul 11, 2008 at 10:43 AM, Steve Hill [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: On Thu, 10 Jul 2008, Martijn van Oosterhout wrote: Inside housing estates sounds like living_street me. Maybe the word 'estate' means something else in the UK than I think. The definition of living_street is a bit vague in the wiki. A relevant bit seems to be: Simply tagging them with something like highway=residential, max_speed=7, motorcar=yes, motorcycle=yes, bicycle=yes Oh, I never looked at the wiki, I use it to mark roads with the appropriate sign in NL (and no, the speed limit isn't 7, I've never seen that anywhere). The Wiki mentions the legal regulations in several countries, like walking speed when pedestrians are present, walking speed, 20 km/h and such. In Germany, it's walking speed. ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/talk
Re: [OSM-talk] Misclassified roads
On Sat, 12 Jul 2008, Gervase Markham wrote: Well, there was a note on Map Features saying not to do it, but until recently it didn't say what you _should_ do. Until recently there was no approved tag to do it. A lot of people promoted the idea of just never adding roads without knowing their classification, which to many of us wasn't really acceptable (as far as I'm concerned, it is better to have a road on the map than not, even if you don't have all the information). - Steve xmpp:[EMAIL PROTECTED] sip:[EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.nexusuk.org/ Servatis a periculum, servatis a maleficum - Whisper, Evanescence ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/talk
Re: [OSM-talk] Misclassified roads
On Fri, 11 Jul 2008, Richard Fairhurst wrote: And that's fine: you seem to place more of an emphasis on the Gospel According To Map Features than I do If you don't go by the definitions in Map Features, what definitions do you go by? As far as you are concerned, what is the difference between an unclassified and a tertiary? If we don't have some agreed definition, the tags become meaningless since the meaning will vary widely depending on who surveyed the road. For example, if someone is writing a route planner for HGVs, it is wise to have it try and avoid unclassified roads as they are defined by the wiki. But it is not sensible to avoid a high quality dual carriageway (which seems to match some other people's definitions of an unclassified road). What _isn't_ fine is going round removing others' work because you disagree with it. Ok, so maybe I shouldn't have changed the classification of some of these roads until I had resurveyed them. I certainly don't consider it to be removing someone's work though - the way is still on the map. All I'm trying to do is standardise the tags a bit so they match the _only_ documented definition. As for C, that's pretty much immaterial: I've spoken at a public inquiry to get a landowner to remove an obstruction on a C road. I say road, actually it was a foot-wide path from one village to another three miles away. That was exactly my point - no one cares whether a road has a C number or not, map users just care what the road is _like_ - I don't see how you can say that a relatively narrow road with no centre line is like a big dual carriageway. - Steve xmpp:[EMAIL PROTECTED] sip:[EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.nexusuk.org/ Servatis a periculum, servatis a maleficum - Whisper, Evanescence ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/talk
Re: [OSM-talk] Misclassified roads
My two cents, or Kurush here in Northern Cyprus. The road tag is a good thing, as it lets one and all know that further work needs to be done surveying etc. The question for me is; what counts as an unclassified road? Here, *most* roads are 1.5 cars wide, no markings whatsoever. But, the vast majority of roads linking villages are exactly the same. My reading of MF is that they should not be unclassified, but in reality they are exactly the same! No markings, 1.5 cars wide. Well, no lights, no drains, no directions . David Janda djanda ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/talk
Re: [OSM-talk] Misclassified roads
Steve Hill wrote: If you don't go by the definitions in Map Features, what definitions do you go by? As far as you are concerned, what is the difference between an unclassified and a tertiary? If we don't have some agreed definition, the tags become meaningless since the meaning will vary widely depending on who surveyed the road. For example, if someone is writing a route planner for HGVs, it is wise to have it try and avoid unclassified roads as they are defined by the wiki. But it is not sensible to avoid a high quality dual carriageway (which seems to match some other people's definitions of an unclassified road). Sure. I think the first thing to establish is that the word unclassified, in itself, doesn't particularly mean anything; nor does tertiary. (Just as primary in OSM-speak actually means non-primary UK roads!) They're words, nothing more. You could just as easily call them highway=level1 [motorway], level2 [trunk], etc. I posted earlier in the thread that I'd define a tertiary road as something like significant through route for non-local use, other than an A/B/M road. It's a descending scale of localness: highway=motorway is the road that you use to get from one end of the country to another, highway=residential is the one that delivers you right to your house but nowhere else, and the rest are stages in between. That's how I understand our highway tagging system. As it happens, the UK (and several other countries) have a road classification system that does exactly the same. It makes sense to align OSM's definitions with theirs where possible, so we do. But in the UK this doesn't work for anything below secondary. So to reiterate: I'd use highway=tertiary for a useful, good-quality route that might form part of a wider journey; I'd use highway=unclassified for one predominantly intended for local use. That dual carriageway off the A4067 is an interesting example - should it be tertiary (clearly very good quality) or unclassified (it doesn't really go anywhere apart from the industrial estate)? Both would seem to have merit. cheers Richard ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/talk
Re: [OSM-talk] Misclassified roads
Steve Hill: On Sat, 12 Jul 2008, Gervase Markham wrote: Well, there was a note on Map Features saying not to do it, but until recently it didn't say what you _should_ do. Until recently there was no approved tag to do it. A lot of people promoted the idea of just never adding roads without knowing their classification, which to many of us wasn't really acceptable (as far as I'm concerned, it is better to have a road on the map than not, even if you don't have all the information). - Steve xmpp:[EMAIL PROTECTED] sip:[EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.nexusuk.org/ Servatis a periculum, servatis a maleficum - Whisper, Evanescence Just to add some 2 cents from Germany: highway=unclassified is used for minor roads through commercial/industrial areas according to our country features definition. So changing hwy=unclassified to hwy=road on the OSM dataset in Germany would probably target the revers numbers: 80% correctly tagged industrial/commercial roads. ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/talk
Re: [OSM-talk] Misclassified roads
Richard Fairhurst wrote: Have they really? I don't recall ever seeing this, and I do quite a lot of rural mapping. Well, there was a note on Map Features saying not to do it, but until recently it didn't say what you _should_ do. Gerv ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/talk
Re: [OSM-talk] Misclassified roads
On Thu, 10 Jul 2008, Martijn van Oosterhout wrote: I don't want to be annoying, but what about the ordinary roads, which don't fit in the above classification. With houses on both side but limited to 50km/h for example. Well, this is why I don't like the highway=residential tag. Inside housing estates sounds like living_street me. Maybe the word 'estate' means something else in the UK than I think. The definition of living_street is a bit vague in the wiki. A relevant bit seems to be: Simply tagging them with something like highway=residential, max_speed=7, motorcar=yes, motorcycle=yes, bicycle=yes Which implies to me that the living_street tag almost never applies in the UK - The vast majority of our residential roads have a speed limit of 30mph, with newer ones tending to have a 20mph limit. Just about the only roads you'll see in the UK with a 5-10mph speed limit are service roads to amenities such as schools. I don't know enough about the road systems in other countries to comment - from your description, it sounds like maybe you have living streets (very low speed limit) rather than residential roads (20-30mph speed limits). As I said, I really don't like the residential tag (although I do use it in order to be consistent with the rest of the map). For roads with speed limits over 30mph I don't tag them with highway=residential, even if they have houses along them. the UK and is totally meaningless elsewhere. So we denoted something FTLOG don't go changing them all because you think they're wrong according to some classification you came up with on your own. As I've said before, I have no intention of changing any areas I'm not involved with - I'm just bringing a problem to the attention of everyone else since I suspect that Swansea isn't the only place affected. The roads I am retagging in Swansea are not wrong according to some classification I came up with on my own - they are wrong according to the definitions in the wiki - things like 50mph 2 lane dual carriageways are _not_ unclassified roads by any stretch of the imagination. The problem is simply that highway=unclassified has been used by a lot of people as a general I don't know what the classification of this road is tag because up until recently there was no other tag to use for this purpose. - Steve xmpp:[EMAIL PROTECTED] sip:[EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.nexusuk.org/ Servatis a periculum, servatis a maleficum - Whisper, Evanescence ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/talk
Re: [OSM-talk] Misclassified roads
On Fri, Jul 11, 2008 at 10:43 AM, Steve Hill [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: On Thu, 10 Jul 2008, Martijn van Oosterhout wrote: I don't want to be annoying, but what about the ordinary roads, which don't fit in the above classification. With houses on both side but limited to 50km/h for example. Well, this is why I don't like the highway=residential tag. Agreed, highway=residential was never very well thought out and it rendered even worse. Inside housing estates sounds like living_street me. Maybe the word 'estate' means something else in the UK than I think. The definition of living_street is a bit vague in the wiki. A relevant bit seems to be: Simply tagging them with something like highway=residential, max_speed=7, motorcar=yes, motorcycle=yes, bicycle=yes Oh, I never looked at the wiki, I use it to mark roads with the appropriate sign in NL (and no, the speed limit isn't 7, I've never seen that anywhere). I don't know enough about the road systems in other countries to comment - from your description, it sounds like maybe you have living streets (very low speed limit) rather than residential roads (20-30mph speed limits). As I said, I really don't like the residential tag (although I do use it in order to be consistent with the rest of the map). For roads with speed limits over 30mph I don't tag them with highway=residential, even if they have houses along them. We don't have anything with very low speed limits, not even living_streets. But from the your description here, what do you tag roads that are 30mph and don't have a centre line? i.e. the single most common type here. As I've said before, I have no intention of changing any areas I'm not involved with - I'm just bringing a problem to the attention of everyone else since I suspect that Swansea isn't the only place affected. Ok, as long as you change nothing in NL I don't really mind one way or the other :) - they are wrong according to the definitions in the wiki - things like 50mph 2 lane dual carriageways are _not_ unclassified roads by any stretch of the imagination. Agreed. Have a nice day, -- Martijn van Oosterhout [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://svana.org/kleptog/ ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/talk
Re: [OSM-talk] Misclassified roads
On 11/07/2008 09:43, Steve Hill wrote: The definition of living_street is a bit vague in the wiki. A relevant bit seems to be: Simply tagging them with something like highway=residential, max_speed=7, motorcar=yes, motorcycle=yes, bicycle=yes Which implies to me that the living_street tag almost never applies in the UK - The vast majority of our residential roads have a speed limit of 30mph, with newer ones tending to have a 20mph limit. Just about the only roads you'll see in the UK with a 5-10mph speed limit are service roads to amenities such as schools. I don't know enough about the road systems in other countries to comment - from your description, it sounds like maybe you have living streets (very low speed limit) rather than residential roads (20-30mph speed limits). As I said, I really don't like the residential tag (although I do use it in order to be consistent with the rest of the map). For roads with speed limits over 30mph I don't tag them with highway=residential, even if they have houses along them. You are right. Living streets are uncommon in the UK. I believe Living Street is a translation of the Dutch Woonerf where the concept was invented. The equivalent here, to which the tag would be applied, is known as Home Zone, and it has a specific sign: http://www.dft.gov.uk/pgr/roads/tss/general/coll_newroadsignsandmarkingsleaf/dft_roads_022863-16.jpg (which is taken from this page http://www.dft.gov.uk/pgr/roads/tss/general/newroadsignsandmarkingsleafletb?page=1 ) Like all these things, the details vary from country to country. What makes some European Living Streets so much better than those in the UK is that they place a default responsibility on the motorist for any crash. David ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/talk
Re: [OSM-talk] Misclassified roads
On 11/07/2008 09:43, Steve Hill wrote: On Thu, 10 Jul 2008, Martijn van Oosterhout wrote: I don't want to be annoying, but what about the ordinary roads, which don't fit in the above classification. With houses on both side but limited to 50km/h for example. Well, this is why I don't like the highway=residential tag. I don't see the problem in that example: highway=residential maxspeed=50 (though in the UK, tghat would be 30mph, which is the default anyway, so the description is the perfect example of highway=residential). If the speed limit were higher (or even if it wasn't), that might well be because it is a more significant road in the first place, perhaps a local distributor which is still residential but has greater local significance. As several of us said yesterday, in the absence of visible official designation, that's a subjective judgement, but in that case, I would use highway=tertiary abutters=residential maxspeed=... (and personally, I use units - maxspeed=40mph - but that's another discussion we've already done to death; and I haven't been as rigorous as I should have been in recording non-default speed limits). David ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/talk
Re: [OSM-talk] Misclassified roads
On Fri, 11 Jul 2008, Martijn van Oosterhout wrote: But from the your description here, what do you tag roads that are 30mph and don't have a centre line? i.e. the single most common type here. That's a bit of a judgement call depending on the situation I think. Most of the streets on housing estates around the UK are wide 20-30mph and many have no centre line. However, they are wide enough to have a centre line - I guess the council don't bother painting the lines because they see it as unnecessary on a low-speed, low-traffic road and don't want the extra costs involved. I tag these roads as residential if they are lined with houses. If the road is for just for non-residential access (e.g. access to a school, or for deliveries to some shops) and it isn't a through road, I tag it as service Some housing estates have quite narrow roads (just wide enough for 2 cars to pass) and no footways (so it is a shared surface for cars and pedestrians) - I'd tag these as residential. Rural areas are a bit more problematic - they sometimes have fairly narrow roads which are most definately not residential but may have fairly low speed limits (30mph), especially around village centres. I guess I'd err on the unclassified side even though the speed limit is low. I hit a problem a few days ago of not quite knowing how to handle the difference between an unclassified road (high speed limit, just wide enough for cars to pass each other but no centre line) and a very narrow road (still a high speed limit, but only 1 car wide and with no passing places - if you meet someone coming the other way you'll be reversing for a couple of miles!). In the end I settled on tagging them both as unclassified, but setting lanes=1 on the narrow one, but I'm still not entirely happy with this since it renders the same. There was some debate as to whether it should be marked as a track instead, but tracks are supposed to be unsurfaced (and also, they render very similar to footpaths which gives the impression that you can't drive down them unless you look at the map key). Ok, as long as you change nothing in NL I don't really mind one way or the other :) :) - Steve xmpp:[EMAIL PROTECTED] sip:[EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.nexusuk.org/ Servatis a periculum, servatis a maleficum - Whisper, Evanescence ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/talk
Re: [OSM-talk] Misclassified roads
On Fri, 11 Jul 2008, David Earl wrote: The equivalent here, to which the tag would be applied, is known as Home Zone, and it has a specific sign: http://www.dft.gov.uk/pgr/roads/tss/general/coll_newroadsignsandmarkingsleaf/dft_roads_022863-16.jpg (which is taken from this page http://www.dft.gov.uk/pgr/roads/tss/general/newroadsignsandmarkingsleafletb?page=1 ) Interesting... I've never come across one of those signs (although the description makes it all sound like common sense - I would think that in any residential area you should expect kids to be playing in the street, no need for a special sign :) - Steve xmpp:[EMAIL PROTECTED] sip:[EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.nexusuk.org/ Servatis a periculum, servatis a maleficum - Whisper, Evanescence ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/talk
Re: [OSM-talk] Misclassified roads
On Fri, 11 Jul 2008, David Earl wrote: I don't see the problem in that example: highway=residential maxspeed=50 Yes, in that case. Although I think tagging roads lined with houses as highway=tertiary, abutters=residential is better - really the only difference between a tertiary road and a residential road is that the residential one has houses along it, and you can get houses along primary and secondary roads too so it would seem more consistent to move the existence of houses along the road off onto a separate tag rather than overloading the highway tag. (and personally, I use units - maxspeed=40mph - but that's another discussion we've already done to death; and I haven't been as rigorous as I should have been in recording non-default speed limits). I've certainly not recorded any speed limits to date, although I probably should do. My priority has mainly been to get the roads on the map, since the area that I'm in has had very few mappers (although my other mappers in the area list is now full, which is a nice change :). The absence of any decent aerial photography also slows things down a good deal because you have to go out and resurvey things you aren't sure about rather than being able to have a quick glance at the photos. - Steve xmpp:[EMAIL PROTECTED] sip:[EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.nexusuk.org/ Servatis a periculum, servatis a maleficum - Whisper, Evanescence ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/talk
Re: [OSM-talk] Misclassified roads
On 11/07/2008 10:26, Steve Hill wrote: On Fri, 11 Jul 2008, David Earl wrote: The equivalent here, to which the tag would be applied, is known as Home Zone, and it has a specific sign: http://www.dft.gov.uk/pgr/roads/tss/general/coll_newroadsignsandmarkingsleaf/dft_roads_022863-16.jpg (which is taken from this page http://www.dft.gov.uk/pgr/roads/tss/general/newroadsignsandmarkingsleafletb?page=1 ) Interesting... I've never come across one of those signs (although the description makes it all sound like common sense - I would think that in any residential area you should expect kids to be playing in the street, no need for a special sign :) If only. I had occasion to take a journey driven by a former colleague on a cross country route a while back. I was shocked that almost as a matter of principle he drove at 38mph through villages where the speed limit was 30mph (which is too high anyway for residential environments IMO), his reasoning being that there was a 10% allowance for incorrect speedometers (notwithstanding that that might have worked in the other direction) and then plus 5mph because the police don't bother with less than that. No wonder we need speed cameras when there is almost institutionalised abuse, let alone Home Zones. At least the rules governing 20mph areas (not specifically Home Zones) have been relaxed a bit to make them easier to implement (though Cambridgeshire is till very reluctant, places like Hull and Portsmouth have been really progressive on this). I think the approach off Earlham Road in Norwich (and I've seen it elsewhere too) is quite interesting. The 20mph streets are signed with the usual 20mph roundel, but have a plate underneath which is a children's drawing all about slowing down (e.g. a snail). There's lots of different ones. A nice piece of psychology I thought. Cambourne in Cambridgeshire also has a different approach. They have a 19mph speed limit. I think the psychology here is to make you do a double take on seeing the sign, because it is unusual. It's self defeating of course if used widely. The Home Zone would usually go further than a sign - the street would be re-engineered to blur the distinction between road and pavement, to integrate movements and parking and so on. There's a whole organisation devoted to them: http://www.homezones.org/ see also the IHE website http://www.homezones.org.uk/ On the whole I think they're a good idea, but there is a downside that it could make people think, at least subconsciously, that these are the only residential streets where you have to take such extreme care. Anyway, this is all rather off topic, sorry. David ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/talk
Re: [OSM-talk] Misclassified roads
On Fri, 11 Jul 2008, David Earl wrote: At least the rules governing 20mph areas (not specifically Home Zones) have been relaxed a bit to make them easier to implement (though Cambridgeshire is till very reluctant, places like Hull and Portsmouth have been really progressive on this). To be honest, I'm very surprised that councils haven't been sued under the disability discrimination act for speed cusions since they can cause people with back problems a lot of pain as the car goes over them. (And besides, they are pretty useless since anyone driving a 4x4 has a wide enough wheel-base to blast over them at whatever speed they want). I've also read that they can cause hidden tyre damage that can lead to blow-outs at high speed, so whilst the statistics may show that they reduce low-speed accidents on housing estates they probably increase the number of very serious high-speed accidents on other roads. but have a plate underneath which is a children's drawing all about slowing down (e.g. a snail). I drove through Neath a few days ago and noticed that they had similar signs - certainly an interesting idea (I have no idea how well it works though) Anyway, this is all rather off topic, sorry. Indeed - interesting none the less though :) - Steve xmpp:[EMAIL PROTECTED] sip:[EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.nexusuk.org/ Servatis a periculum, servatis a maleficum - Whisper, Evanescence ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/talk
Re: [OSM-talk] Misclassified roads
On Thu, 10 Jul 2008, Richard Fairhurst wrote: Er, I've driven past that one a handful of times (some friends used to live in Pontardawe) and if it's the road I'm thinking of - down towards the KFC - it _is_ unclassified. Well, either that or tertiary; It can't possibly be unclassified - an unclassified road is a single carriage way, usually with no centre line. This road is a dual carriageway with two lanes in each direction. I need to go and survey the area to see if it has an A or B number - if it doesn't then it's a tertiary, definately not an unclassified. (and given the size of the road I would be *extremely* surprised if it didn't have an A B or C number). Why not just leave them alone until you have the time to properly survey them, rather than assuming you know better than the original mapper? Two reasons: 1. Informing people who are using the map that the classification is unknown rather than giving them an almost certainly incorrect classification is a Good Thing. 2. Making it more obvious that the road need surveying means that it can be done systematically (possibly by more than just one person too). - Steve xmpp:[EMAIL PROTECTED] sip:[EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.nexusuk.org/ Servatis a periculum, servatis a maleficum - Whisper, Evanescence ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/talk
Re: [OSM-talk] Misclassified roads
Apologies, I missed the link in the previous email: [1] http://www.openstreetmap.org/?lat=52.50163 http://www.openstreetmap.org/?lat=52.50163lon=-1.87931zoom=17layers=B00F TF lon=-1.87931zoom=17layers=B00FTF Cheers Andy -Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:talk- [EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Steve Hill Sent: 11 July 2008 2:57 PM To: Richard Fairhurst Cc: talk@openstreetmap.org Subject: Re: [OSM-talk] Misclassified roads On Thu, 10 Jul 2008, Richard Fairhurst wrote: Er, I've driven past that one a handful of times (some friends used to live in Pontardawe) and if it's the road I'm thinking of - down towards the KFC - it _is_ unclassified. Well, either that or tertiary; It can't possibly be unclassified - an unclassified road is a single carriage way, usually with no centre line. This road is a dual carriageway with two lanes in each direction. I need to go and survey the area to see if it has an A or B number - if it doesn't then it's a tertiary, definately not an unclassified. (and given the size of the road I would be *extremely* surprised if it didn't have an A B or C number). Why not just leave them alone until you have the time to properly survey them, rather than assuming you know better than the original mapper? Two reasons: 1. Informing people who are using the map that the classification is unknown rather than giving them an almost certainly incorrect classification is a Good Thing. 2. Making it more obvious that the road need surveying means that it can be done systematically (possibly by more than just one person too). - Steve xmpp:[EMAIL PROTECTED] sip:[EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.nexusuk.org/ Servatis a periculum, servatis a maleficum - Whisper, Evanescence ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/talk No virus found in this incoming message. Checked by AVG - http://www.avg.com Version: 8.0.138 / Virus Database: 270.4.7/1545 - Release Date: 10/07/2008 6:43 PM ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/talk
Re: [OSM-talk] Misclassified roads
Steve Hill wrote: On Thu, 10 Jul 2008, Richard Fairhurst wrote: Er, I've driven past that one a handful of times (some friends used to live in Pontardawe) and if it's the road I'm thinking of - down towards the KFC - it _is_ unclassified. Well, either that or tertiary; It can't possibly be unclassified - an unclassified road is a single carriage way, usually with no centre line. I like your confident can't possibly, but nonetheless, that's not a definition I accept and nor (judging by other mails in this thread) does everyone else. And that's fine: you seem to place more of an emphasis on the Gospel According To Map Features than I do (though MF doesn't say _anything_ about dual carriagewayness), and there's nothing wrong with that. What _isn't_ fine is going round removing others' work because you disagree with it. This road is a dual carriageway with two lanes in each direction. I need to go and survey the area to see if it has an A or B number - if it doesn't then it's a tertiary, definately not an unclassified. (and given the size of the road I would be *extremely* surprised if it didn't have an A B or C number). Like I say, I have been there. It doesn't have an A or B number, at least not one that's signposted. As for C, that's pretty much immaterial: I've spoken at a public inquiry to get a landowner to remove an obstruction on a C road. I say road, actually it was a foot-wide path from one village to another three miles away. cheers Richard ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/talk
Re: [OSM-talk] Misclassified roads
Alex Wilson wrote: Perhaps a compromise would be to add a new tag: something like 'needs_review=true'. After a revisit of the road, the tag can be removed and the road classification left as is or modified as appropriate. Cheers, Alex Wouldn't it be better to have a last_reviewed field as well, or something similar that's machine readable? Maybe also along with your needs_reviewed tag. This way things could be automatically flagged for review at a certain date (maybe for example landuse=contruction), or as you point out just flagged for review. Cheers Kyle ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/talk
[OSM-talk] Misclassified roads
Steve, I would suggest you reconsider doing this. I would strongly support the use of highway=road for new roads that no information is available for, eg from a trace that was done with a car but no notes were made. However, by retagging unclassified to road you are essentially deleting information from the database that you don't know to be incorrect. Sure, if you know the classification is correct, change it, but don't just delete it - it could be correct. For what it's worth, I work on the following basis for UK road classifications: * trunk/primary/secondary - as signed. * tertiary - other roads that predominantly have a white line of some sort down the centre. These tend to be wider roads used by more traffic. I believe OS maps use a similar distinction, and I think it's useful for planning routes, both with a map or automatically. * unclassified - roads without a centre line. If they are too narrow for passing, I add lanes=1. On this basis I have mapped a great number of unclassified roads. It would be a real shame if you deleted this information that I had carefully collected. I accept that there are a large number of incorrectly tagged roads out there, but correct them, don't delete info on the offchance. Regards, David Message: 2 Date: Wed, 9 Jul 2008 15:36:03 +0100 (BST) From: Steve Hill [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: [OSM-talk] Misclassified roads To: talk@openstreetmap.org Message-ID: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; format=flowed; charset=US-ASCII Following the approval of the highway=road tag, I've set about aggressively changing a lot of the highway=unclassified roads around Swansea, that I believe are misclassified, to highway=road, with the intention that they can then be surveyed and reclassified correctly. However, after starting to do this, I've realised just how many of the roads are misclassified - I'd estimate that well over 80% of the roads tagged as highway=unclassified are, infact, not unclassified roads. So I'm wondering about the merits of changing *all* the highway=unclassified roads in the area to highway=road so that the whole lot can be classified appropriately from scratch. This would make it obvious which roads really are unclassified and which need to be checked. What are peoples' views on this? I imagine that much of the OSM world is affected in the same way, and this renders the highway=unclassified tag relatively meaningless in it's current state. Should there be a global reclassification to fix this, or is there a better way? - Steve xmpp:[EMAIL PROTECTED] sip:[EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.nexusuk.org/ __ Not happy with your email address?. Get the one you really want - millions of new email addresses available now at Yahoo! http://uk.docs.yahoo.com/ymail/new.html ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/talk
Re: [OSM-talk] Misclassified roads
Perhaps a compromise would be to add a new tag: something like 'needs_review=true'. After a revisit of the road, the tag can be removed and the road classification left as is or modified as appropriate. Cheers, Alex 2008/7/10 David Ebling [EMAIL PROTECTED]: Steve, I would suggest you reconsider doing this. I would strongly support the use of highway=road for new roads that no information is available for, eg from a trace that was done with a car but no notes were made. However, by retagging unclassified to road you are essentially deleting information from the database that you don't know to be incorrect. Sure, if you know the classification is correct, change it, but don't just delete it - it could be correct. For what it's worth, I work on the following basis for UK road classifications: * trunk/primary/secondary - as signed. * tertiary - other roads that predominantly have a white line of some sort down the centre. These tend to be wider roads used by more traffic. I believe OS maps use a similar distinction, and I think it's useful for planning routes, both with a map or automatically. * unclassified - roads without a centre line. If they are too narrow for passing, I add lanes=1. On this basis I have mapped a great number of unclassified roads. It would be a real shame if you deleted this information that I had carefully collected. I accept that there are a large number of incorrectly tagged roads out there, but correct them, don't delete info on the offchance. Regards, David Message: 2 Date: Wed, 9 Jul 2008 15:36:03 +0100 (BST) From: Steve Hill [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: [OSM-talk] Misclassified roads To: talk@openstreetmap.org Message-ID: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; format=flowed; charset=US-ASCII Following the approval of the highway=road tag, I've set about aggressively changing a lot of the highway=unclassified roads around Swansea, that I believe are misclassified, to highway=road, with the intention that they can then be surveyed and reclassified correctly. However, after starting to do this, I've realised just how many of the roads are misclassified - I'd estimate that well over 80% of the roads tagged as highway=unclassified are, infact, not unclassified roads. So I'm wondering about the merits of changing *all* the highway=unclassified roads in the area to highway=road so that the whole lot can be classified appropriately from scratch. This would make it obvious which roads really are unclassified and which need to be checked. What are peoples' views on this? I imagine that much of the OSM world is affected in the same way, and this renders the highway=unclassified tag relatively meaningless in it's current state. Should there be a global reclassification to fix this, or is there a better way? - Steve xmpp:[EMAIL PROTECTED] [EMAIL PROTECTED] sip:[EMAIL PROTECTED] [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.nexusuk.org/ __ Not happy with your email address?. Get the one you really want - millions of new email addresses available now at Yahoo! http://uk.docs.yahoo.com/ymail/new.html ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/talk ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/talk
[OSM-talk] Misclassified roads
From: Steve Hill [EMAIL PROTECTED] Date: 9 July 2008 15:36:03 BDT To: talk@openstreetmap.org Subject: [OSM-talk] Misclassified roads Following the approval of the highway=road tag, I've set about aggressively changing a lot of the highway=unclassified roads around Swansea, that I believe are misclassified, to highway=road, with the intention that they can then be surveyed and reclassified correctly. If you believe they are wrongly tagged (I would avoid the word misclassified when referring to an unclassified road ;-) presumably you have a good idea what classification they are, so why not just re- tag them as primary, tertiary or whatever? However, after starting to do this, I've realised just how many of the roads are misclassified - I'd estimate that well over 80% of the roads tagged as highway=unclassified are, infact, not unclassified roads. How on earth did you arrive at this figure? Wouldn't 'guess wildly' be a better verb than 'estimate'? So I'm wondering about the merits of changing *all* the highway=unclassified roads in the area to highway=road so that the whole lot can be classified appropriately from scratch. No way! I personally have mapped hundreds of roads, a high proportion of them unclassified (and I suspect I am not the only one who knows what this means) and would not want anyone 'aggressively changing' them. This would make it obvious which roads really are unclassified and which need to be checked. What are peoples' views on this? I imagine that much of the OSM world is affected in the same way, and this renders the highway=unclassified tag relatively meaningless in it's current state. Should there be a global reclassification to fix this, or is there a better way? There's always a better way. I suspect the motorway/trunk/primary/ secondary/tertiary/unclassified hierarchy was derived from Britain's highway classification system, since it appears to be a perfect match and OSM's roots are here. I don't have much knowledge of how roads are classified elsewhere, but I guess most countries have classification systems which can be made to correspond to this hierarchy. The grey area for me is in the tertiary/unclassified/ service/residential area. C-class roads in the UK are not labelled as such on road signs or maps (and of course we shouldn't look at maps as this might infringe copyright ;-) so if you don't work for the local highway authority you can only guess at what's tertiary and what's unclassified. In rural areas I tend to tag roads wide enough for cars to pass as tertiary and narrow lanes as unclassified. How many houses are needed for the residential tag is obviously a matter of judgement as is application of the service tag. I have seen some wrongly tagged roads but I would guess nearer 5% than 80%. ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/talk
Re: [OSM-talk] Misclassified roads
On Wed, 9 Jul 2008, David Earl wrote: We've gone round and round the issue of what road classification means many times before. With a few dissenters, the consensus has generally been that you tag what you find on the ground. This sometimes contradicts the official classification. Some people who have had access to this information have used different tags to apply the official classification (though I do wonder about the copyright status of such information). You misunderstand the problem - the problem isn't that the classification on OSM doesn't match the official classification. The problem is that until highway=road was approved, there was no classification for it's a road but I can't remember what type, so people have used highway=unclassified so that the road at least gets rendered. This means that most roads tagged as highway=unclassified are most definately not unclassified roads on the ground - they are residential, tertiary, secondary or even primary roads. If a road is tagged as highway=unclassified, it should be a relatively narrow road - it should not be a wide residential road with houses down both sides, or a dual carriageway. - Steve xmpp:[EMAIL PROTECTED] sip:[EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.nexusuk.org/ Servatis a periculum, servatis a maleficum - Whisper, Evanescence ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/talk
Re: [OSM-talk] Misclassified roads
Steve Hill wrote: You misunderstand the problem - the problem isn't that the classification on OSM doesn't match the official classification. The problem is that until highway=road was approved, there was no classification for it's a road but I can't remember what type, so people have used highway=unclassified so that the road at least gets rendered. Have they really? I don't recall ever seeing this, and I do quite a lot of rural mapping. cheers Richard ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/talk
Re: [OSM-talk] Misclassified roads
On Thu, 10 Jul 2008, elvin ibbotson wrote: If you believe they are wrongly tagged (I would avoid the word misclassified when referring to an unclassified road ;-) presumably you have a good idea what classification they are, so why not just re-tag them as primary, tertiary or whatever? I know that they are not unclassified, but couldn't tell you what they really are without actually going and surveying them. So my plan was to retag them as highway=road so that it would then be easy to see which ones still need to be resurveyed to fix the classification. But whilst doing this I realised just how many such roads there are and wondered if it would be better to just retag them all to highway=road and then resurvey them. How on earth did you arrive at this figure? Wouldn't 'guess wildly' be a better verb than 'estimate'? No, it isn't a wild guess, it is an estimate based on looking at which roads are tagged as highway=unclassified and using my knowledge of which ones definately aren't unclassified roads. No way! I personally have mapped hundreds of roads, a high proportion of them unclassified (and I suspect I am not the only one who knows what this means) and would not want anyone 'aggressively changing' them. So how would you go about making highway=unclassified a meaningful tag, given how many roads on the map are tagged as highway=unclassified even though they definately aren't unclassified roads? What are peoples' views on this? Thats what I hoped to find out by starting this discussion. :) I expect a lot of no, we don't want any bulk changes responses, but I'm interested if anyone has a better idea. The grey area for me is in the tertiary/unclassified/service/residential area. Yes, this is certainly a grey area. For me, I interpret them as: Tertiary: A minor road, usually with a dotted line along the middle. Unclassified: Narrower than a tertiary, usually without a dotted line along the middle and usually with a relatively high speed limit (although you might not want to drive anywhere near that speed :) Residential: Roads in housing estates - they probably look like tertiary roads, but have houses along them (I actually don't like this classification and think they would be better tagged as highway=tertiary and abutters=residential) Service: Something similar to an unclassified road, but used for access rather than a through road. Usually with a low speed limit. However, despite the grey areas, I'm not really discussing the classifications themselves, I'm trying to work out the best way to fix the problem that for a long time highway=unclassified has been used by a lot of people as a catch all for a road, I don't know the classification (maybe because they were traced from Yahoo rather than surveyed, or the submitter couldn't remember what the road was like when tracing the GPS track). C-class roads in the UK are not labelled as such on road signs or maps (and of course we shouldn't look at maps as this might infringe copyright ;-) so if you don't work for the local highway authority you can only guess at what's tertiary and what's unclassified. From Map Features: Tertiary: Generally for use on roads wider than 4 metres width, and for faster/wider minor roads that aren't A or B roads. In the UK, they tend to have dashed lines down the middle, whereas unclassified roads don't. So the difference between highway=tertiary and highway=unclassified is defined - you don't need road signs for this. - Steve xmpp:[EMAIL PROTECTED] sip:[EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.nexusuk.org/ Servatis a periculum, servatis a maleficum - Whisper, Evanescence ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/talk
Re: [OSM-talk] Misclassified roads
Steve Hill wrote: Sent: 10 July 2008 10:20 AM To: elvin ibbotson Cc: talk@openstreetmap.org Subject: Re: [OSM-talk] Misclassified roads I know that they are not unclassified, but couldn't tell you what they really are without actually going and surveying them. So my plan was to retag them as highway=road so that it would then be easy to see which ones still need to be resurveyed to fix the classification. But whilst doing this I realised just how many such roads there are and wondered if it would be better to just retag them all to highway=road and then resurvey them. But any automatic retagging would change those roads which are truly unclassified (and maybe have been surveyed by others) to highway=road. Please don't do that. If there is doubt on specific roads then either get out there and check them or add an extra tag giving your reasons for querying them. Cheers Andy ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/talk
Re: [OSM-talk] Misclassified roads
On Thu, 10 Jul 2008, Andy Robinson (blackadder-lists) wrote: But any automatic retagging would change those roads which are truly unclassified (and maybe have been surveyed by others) to highway=road. Yes, and they would have to be resurveyed because at the moment it is impossible to tell which roads are truely unclassified and which are mistagged. If there is doubt on specific roads then either get out there and check them or add an extra tag giving your reasons for querying them. The problem is that it isn't specific roads - the vast majority of roads tagged as highway=unclassified seem to be in question. - Steve xmpp:[EMAIL PROTECTED] sip:[EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.nexusuk.org/ Servatis a periculum, servatis a maleficum - Whisper, Evanescence ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/talk
Re: [OSM-talk] Misclassified roads
Steve Hill [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Sent: 10 July 2008 11:46 AM To: Andy Robinson (blackadder-lists) Cc: talk@openstreetmap.org Subject: RE: [OSM-talk] Misclassified roads On Thu, 10 Jul 2008, Andy Robinson (blackadder-lists) wrote: But any automatic retagging would change those roads which are truly unclassified (and maybe have been surveyed by others) to highway=road. Yes, and they would have to be resurveyed because at the moment it is impossible to tell which roads are truely unclassified and which are mistagged. If there is doubt on specific roads then either get out there and check them or add an extra tag giving your reasons for querying them. The problem is that it isn't specific roads - the vast majority of roads tagged as highway=unclassified seem to be in question. You keep saying that but you haven't given a good example. Can you? I tag many roads as unclassified because there are no signs on the ground to say it is a classified road. If I subsequently get more data from another source that says otherwise then fine, I'll retag, but until then as far as I'm concerned they are unclassified rather than classified roads. Cheers Andy ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/talk
Re: [OSM-talk] Misclassified roads
On Thu, 10 Jul 2008, Andy Robinson (blackadder-lists) wrote: You keep saying that but you haven't given a good example. Can you? A dual carriageway that was tagged as highway=unclassified: http://www.openstreetmap.org/?lat=51.67075lon=-3.91377zoom=16layers=B00FTF A bunch of residential roads that were tagged as highway=unclassified: http://www.openstreetmap.org/?lat=51.62323lon=-3.94775zoom=15layers=B00FTF There are plenty more where they came from - I have retagged them as highway=road with the intention of going back and properly resurveying them when I have time. - Steve xmpp:[EMAIL PROTECTED] sip:[EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.nexusuk.org/ Servatis a periculum, servatis a maleficum - Whisper, Evanescence ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/talk
Re: [OSM-talk] Misclassified roads
On Thu, 10 Jul 2008, Andy Robinson (blackadder-lists) wrote: If you know they are truly residential roads, then why not retag them as such? Because they are part of a large number of roads that I know are not unclassified, but were tagged as such. So I have retagged them to highlight the fact that they need resurveying and I am trying to take a vaguely systematic approach. I know that some of that cluster of roads are residential and I'm pretty confident that none of them are unclassified, but I don't know which of them to tag as residential and which to tag as tertiary without going and resurveying them, which I haven't yet had time to do. Just don't go mad and change areas you have no intention of visiting. I'm certainly not planning on changing areas that I have nothing to do with. But I was trying to bring the problem to the attention of people in other areas since they may have a similar situation. The retagging I've done was based on my knowledge of the specific areas, rather than the roads themselves (i.e. given the type of area the roads were in, I deemed it extremely unlikely that they were really unclassified roads, so retagged them to make it obvious they need to be resurveyed). Since I can't tell you the classification of all the specific roads off the top of my head, I can't necessarilly correct the tags immediately, but I can retag to show that the unclassified tag is almost certainly wrong and then resurvey them when I have chance (and hopefully it might also encourage other people in the area to help with the task) Obviously there are many more roads which really are unclassified in rural areas - So far I've been mainly working on the city and a different approach may be needed for the rural areas. - Steve xmpp:[EMAIL PROTECTED] sip:[EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.nexusuk.org/ Servatis a periculum, servatis a maleficum - Whisper, Evanescence ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/talk
Re: [OSM-talk] Misclassified roads
I think that's what people use key = fixme value = note for, wrong? Kind regards, Stefan Alex Wilson wrote: Perhaps a compromise would be to add a new tag: something like 'needs_review=true'. After a revisit of the road, the tag can be removed and the road classification left as is or modified as appropriate. Cheers, Alex 2008/7/10 David Ebling [EMAIL PROTECTED] mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]: Steve, I would suggest you reconsider doing this. I would strongly support the use of highway=road for new roads that no information is available for, eg from a trace that was done with a car but no notes were made. However, by retagging unclassified to road you are essentially deleting information from the database that you don't know to be incorrect. Sure, if you know the classification is correct, change it, but don't just delete it - it could be correct. For what it's worth, I work on the following basis for UK road classifications: * trunk/primary/secondary - as signed. * tertiary - other roads that predominantly have a white line of some sort down the centre. These tend to be wider roads used by more traffic. I believe OS maps use a similar distinction, and I think it's useful for planning routes, both with a map or automatically. * unclassified - roads without a centre line. If they are too narrow for passing, I add lanes=1. On this basis I have mapped a great number of unclassified roads. It would be a real shame if you deleted this information that I had carefully collected. I accept that there are a large number of incorrectly tagged roads out there, but correct them, don't delete info on the offchance. Regards, David Message: 2 Date: Wed, 9 Jul 2008 15:36:03 +0100 (BST) From: Steve Hill [EMAIL PROTECTED] mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: [OSM-talk] Misclassified roads To: talk@openstreetmap.org mailto:talk@openstreetmap.org Message-ID: [EMAIL PROTECTED] mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; format=flowed; charset=US-ASCII Following the approval of the highway=road tag, I've set about aggressively changing a lot of the highway=unclassified roads around Swansea, that I believe are misclassified, to highway=road, with the intention that they can then be surveyed and reclassified correctly. However, after starting to do this, I've realised just how many of the roads are misclassified - I'd estimate that well over 80% of the roads tagged as highway=unclassified are, infact, not unclassified roads. So I'm wondering about the merits of changing *all* the highway=unclassified roads in the area to highway=road so that the whole lot can be classified appropriately from scratch. This would make it obvious which roads really are unclassified and which need to be checked. What are peoples' views on this? I imagine that much of the OSM world is affected in the same way, and this renders the highway=unclassified tag relatively meaningless in it's current state. Should there be a global reclassification to fix this, or is there a better way? - Steve xmpp:[EMAIL PROTECTED] mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] sip:[EMAIL PROTECTED] mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.nexusuk.org/ ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/talk
Re: [OSM-talk] Misclassified roads
On Thu, Jul 10, 2008 at 11:20 AM, Steve Hill [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Unclassified: Narrower than a tertiary, usually without a dotted line along the middle and usually with a relatively high speed limit (although you might not want to drive anywhere near that speed :) Residential: Roads in housing estates - they probably look like tertiary roads, but have houses along them (I actually don't like this classification and think they would be better tagged as highway=tertiary and abutters=residential) I don't want to be annoying, but what about the ordinary roads, which don't fit in the above classification. With houses on both side but limited to 50km/h for example. Inside housing estates sounds like living_street me. Maybe the word 'estate' means something else in the UK than I think. The problem is that unclassified actually means something specfic in the UK and is totally meaningless elsewhere. So we denoted something in the hierarchy of roads here to map to unclassified and FTLOG don't go changing them all because you think they're wrong according to some classification you came up with on your own. Have a nice day, -- Martijn van Oosterhout [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://svana.org/kleptog/ ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/talk
[OSM-talk] Misclassified roads
Following the approval of the highway=road tag, I've set about aggressively changing a lot of the highway=unclassified roads around Swansea, that I believe are misclassified, to highway=road, with the intention that they can then be surveyed and reclassified correctly. However, after starting to do this, I've realised just how many of the roads are misclassified - I'd estimate that well over 80% of the roads tagged as highway=unclassified are, infact, not unclassified roads. So I'm wondering about the merits of changing *all* the highway=unclassified roads in the area to highway=road so that the whole lot can be classified appropriately from scratch. This would make it obvious which roads really are unclassified and which need to be checked. What are peoples' views on this? I imagine that much of the OSM world is affected in the same way, and this renders the highway=unclassified tag relatively meaningless in it's current state. Should there be a global reclassification to fix this, or is there a better way? - Steve xmpp:[EMAIL PROTECTED] sip:[EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.nexusuk.org/ Servatis a periculum, servatis a maleficum - Whisper, Evanescence ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/talk
Re: [OSM-talk] Misclassified roads
Steve Hill wrote: Following the approval of the highway=road tag, I've set about aggressively changing a lot of the highway=unclassified roads around Swansea, that I believe are misclassified, to highway=road, with the intention that they can then be surveyed and reclassified correctly. However, after starting to do this, I've realised just how many of the roads are misclassified - I'd estimate that well over 80% of the roads tagged as highway=unclassified are, infact, not unclassified roads. So I'm wondering about the merits of changing *all* the highway=unclassified roads in the area to highway=road so that the whole lot can be classified appropriately from scratch. This would make it obvious which roads really are unclassified and which need to be checked. What are peoples' views on this? I imagine that much of the OSM world is affected in the same way, and this renders the highway=unclassified tag relatively meaningless in it's current state. Should there be a global reclassification to fix this, or is there a better way? I would be strongly against a global change of highway=unclassified - all of the roads I have tagged as unclassified deserve to be so. I have been working partly on a very rural area, where many of the roads are unclassified (country lanes). To have to retag them from road to unclassified would be a very annoying waste of time. Cheers, Chris ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/talk
Re: [OSM-talk] Misclassified roads
Steve Hill wrote: However, after starting to do this, I've realised just how many of the roads are misclassified - I'd estimate that well over 80% of the roads tagged as highway=unclassified are, infact, not unclassified roads. That 80% figure surprises me, a lot. Most roads _should_ be either unclassified or residential, and it's usually pretty easy to tell which one is which - residential is to be found in built-up areas with lots of roads. Looking at http://www.openstreetmap.org/edit?lat=51.5847lon=-4.0125zoom=14 for example, I note you've reclassified Trewyddfa Road as unclassified. I don't know the area, but assuming it's not an A- or B-road (as NPE suggests), then it's either going to be tertiary, unclassified, or residential, in order of importance. From the road layout, unclassified looks very sensible. With the B4603 Neath Road running parallel, Trewyddfa Road is unlikely to be a significant through route for non-local use, other than an A/B/M road (my working definition of tertiary). Yet it clearly carries some through traffic, so is unlikely to be just residential. YMMV may vary, and in fact, this probably comes down to the definition of tertiary, which is not generally agreed and certainly needs some thought. But working from the assumption that the original mapper (who I think is based nearby) knows the area, then unilaterally removing part of his work (which unclassified-road does) is a pretty hostile thing to do, and is the kind of thing that leads to edit wars. If someone came round Charlbury and retagged as road any roads I'd deliberately tagged as unclassified, I'd be pretty pissed off. No, that's not a challenge. :p cheers Richard ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/talk
Re: [OSM-talk] Misclassified roads
On Wed, 9 Jul 2008, Chris Hill wrote: I would be strongly against a global change of highway=unclassified - all of the roads I have tagged as unclassified deserve to be so. I have been working partly on a very rural area, where many of the roads are unclassified (country lanes). To have to retag them from road to unclassified would be a very annoying waste of time. I agree that there are areas where the classifications are accurate, but is there a good solution to the problem? I'm starting the discussion because I think there is a real problem here - I don't have the solution, I'm hoping that a discussion might produce one. :) - Steve xmpp:[EMAIL PROTECTED] sip:[EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.nexusuk.org/ Servatis a periculum, servatis a maleficum - Whisper, Evanescence ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/talk
Re: [OSM-talk] Misclassified roads
At 05:03 PM 9/07/2008, Steve Hill wrote: On Wed, 9 Jul 2008, Chris Hill wrote: I would be strongly against a global change of highway=unclassified - all of the roads I have tagged as unclassified deserve to be so. I have been working partly on a very rural area, where many of the roads are unclassified (country lanes). To have to retag them from road to unclassified would be a very annoying waste of time. I agree that there are areas where the classifications are accurate, but is there a good solution to the problem? I'm starting the discussion because I think there is a real problem here - I don't have the solution, I'm hoping that a discussion might produce one. :) - Steve Is it indeed a significant problem? 80% does seem a enormous number given that most roads will indeed be unclassified. Can you give some examples? For me personally, unclassified vs. residential is not a problem, just tweaking and unclassified vs. tertiary is somewhat subjective as Richard suggests. I don't generally map in the UK, BTW, so I may be off. Mike ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/talk
Re: [OSM-talk] Misclassified roads
On 09/07/2008 16:03, Steve Hill wrote: On Wed, 9 Jul 2008, Chris Hill wrote: I would be strongly against a global change of highway=unclassified - all of the roads I have tagged as unclassified deserve to be so. I have been working partly on a very rural area, where many of the roads are unclassified (country lanes). To have to retag them from road to unclassified would be a very annoying waste of time. I agree that there are areas where the classifications are accurate, but is there a good solution to the problem? I'm starting the discussion because I think there is a real problem here - I don't have the solution, I'm hoping that a discussion might produce one. :) We've gone round and round the issue of what road classification means many times before. With a few dissenters, the consensus has generally been that you tag what you find on the ground. This sometimes contradicts the official classification. Some people who have had access to this information have used different tags to apply the official classification (though I do wonder about the copyright status of such information). While in the UK (in some other countries it is much less clear cut) this contradiction only happens occasionally for trunk (green signs), primary (A number on b/w signs) and secondary (B number on b/w signs) - e.g. the A road through Oxford discussed a while back - it is pretty much universal with the lesser roads which officially have a 'C' designation but which is virtually never signposted (or commercially mapped) as such, and is really a convenient shorthand for highway engineers. Even rural footpaths are numbered, usually uniquely per parish, but usually only evident when you come across a formal diversion/closure notice. So for the lesser roads, we have what amounts to a subjective choice: residential, tertiary, unclassified (and ok, track, service, byway etc, but those are perhaps a bit easier to be objective about). As it is subjective, I think you are wrong to change them except to maintain a consistency of approach in an area or where they are just wrong (signposted as a B road for example but not tagged as secondary). What I've done (and what a lot of others also seem to have done), for what is now getting to be a very large contiguous area - maybe 2,500 sq. km. centered on Cambridge(*) - is - tertiary for (a) unnumbered roads connecting settlements, except where they are so narrow that they really can't be considered as a reasonable connection even when they do actually join settlements (and yes, that's subjective) (b) unnumbered through or key distributors in urban areas (along with abutters=residential) - unclassified for (c) the rural exceptions to (a) (d) with abutters=something, for urban roads which are seriously non-residential (e.g. public roads through an industrial estate) - residential for everything else public, surfaced and unnumbered in an urban area, in which I include possibly only partly residential. The break between residential and unclassified (or between tertiary with and without abutters=residential) is not visible on the renderings, but I've felt it is important to leave it in as I think it is a potentially useful distinction for e.g. defining an urban envelope or applying a reduced default speed limit for journey planners. IMO, this gives a good indication of a hierarchy in rural areas which continues in and within urban areas. This leads to a nice rendering, but it isn't just tagging for rendering, it genuinely reflects the hierarchy. OS Landranger maps have a similar approach, based on width less than 4m (by memory). While my estimate of width is subjective, not measured, I'm essentially doing the same thing (though sometimes I am inclined to make a somewhat wider road unclassified if it goes nowhere). David * http://www.openstreetmap.org/?lat=52.1543lon=0.0771zoom=13layers=B00FTF - the area now contiguously complete to the all streets with names plus main POIs level is mostly rural, covers around 150 villages, 6 market towns and one modest city, and extends roughly west as far as Papworth Everard, south to Ashwell, Royston, Barley and Saffron Walden, est as far as Moulton east of Newmarket and north as far as Littleport north of Ely and the Ouse south west of Ely. ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/talk
