[Talk-GB] Refs on Tertiary Unclassifed Roads in Highland
I've noticed that many minor roads in the Highland Region of Scotland have been tagged with ref=[CU] based on a PDF document from the regions transport department. I've altered a few of these where I've encountered them to official:ref=* as I don't believe that these are verifiable on the ground in any way. I'd be interested in what others think (these council based refs do appear elsewhere in the country: I can't recall ever seeing one on a road sign). Jerry ___ Talk-GB mailing list Talk-GB@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-gb
Re: [Talk-GB] Refs on Tertiary Unclassifed Roads in Highland
I've noticed the same thing in Kent. However, isn't the issue more about the renderers and routing rules knowing that C-number roads are never signposted? Therefore, you don't tell people to turn right onto the Cxxx, but to take the third right turn. The official documents won't distinguish between B (signposted) and C (not signposted). Paul Bivand (paulbiv) On Sunday 17 Mar 2013 09:54:22 sk53.osm wrote: I've noticed that many minor roads in the Highland Region of Scotland have been tagged with ref=[CU] based on a PDF document from the regions transport department. I've altered a few of these where I've encountered them to official:ref=* as I don't believe that these are verifiable on the ground in any way. I'd be interested in what others think (these council based refs do appear elsewhere in the country: I can't recall ever seeing one on a road sign). Jerry ___ Talk-GB mailing list Talk-GB@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-gb
Re: [Talk-GB] Refs on Tertiary Unclassifed Roads in Highland
There are plenty of things in OSM which are not verifiable on the ground. That in itself is not a reason to disqualify it from OSM or relegate it to second class information. It's more about the fact that there is a verifiable source of authoritative information (appropriately licensed of course) so the information is objectively correct. In the south east of England there are also loads of tertiary/unclassified roads tagged in this way, based on authoritative information from the highways authority (county council etc). Really it's a rendering issue IMHO as to whether to suppress these labels in the UK (other countries may use them differently). Colin On 2013-03-17 10:54, sk53.osm wrote: I've noticed that many minor roads in the Highland Region of Scotland have been tagged with ref=[CU] based on a PDF document from the regions transport department. I've altered a few of these where I've encountered them to official:ref=* as I don't believe that these are verifiable on the ground in any way. I'd be interested in what others think (these council based refs do appear elsewhere in the country: I can't recall ever seeing one on a road sign). Jerry ___ Talk-GB mailing list Talk-GB@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-gb [1] Links: -- [1] http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-gb ___ Talk-GB mailing list Talk-GB@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-gb
Re: [Talk-GB] Refs on Tertiary Unclassifed Roads in Highland
Yes, I believe in some cases they are signposted: in which case a ref=* is entirely appropriate. W.r.t other commenters, I do not believe that it is the role of OSM to hold internal identifiers, however authoritative, for any object as a matter of course. Certainly they should not be placed in tags whose usage is widely used for both renderers and many other applications (For instance, I don't want navit to tell me turn left into U1699 MacNaughton Crescenthttp://www.openstreetmap.org/browse/way/187103578). Otherwise we'll start putting NLPG ref=* on every address, or if copyright permits, OSGB TOIDs on every object. Surely we aim to create our own map, not some copy of what the council holds. A secondary consideration is that we know that many of these 'authoritative' sources contain errors, both of commission and omission (I've blogged about several types of these). Like OSM and OSGB data, I am sure local council data are also prone to time-based degradation. A significant service which OSM can provide is a second independent look at the geography of Britain. I'm also interested in the criteria that Highland use to classify roads as tertiary or minor. The road to Acharacle School http://osm.org/go/e4rnunoQ-- is a tertiary, but in fact is a short stub only serving the school. I'm not sure that using the council's classification (which may have much more to do with road maintenance, width etc., than the traffic distribution network) is most suitable for achieving a reasonably consistent road classification in OSM for the UK. (This is a different and much more complex issue, just look at Spain where every Community has felt the need to create its own road classification system). Jerry On Sun, Mar 17, 2013 at 12:13 PM, Derick Rethans der...@derickrethans.nlwrote: sk53.osm sk53@gmail.com wrote: I've noticed that many minor roads in the Highland Region of Scotland have been tagged with ref=[CU] based on a PDF document from the regions transport department. I've altered a few of these where I've encountered them to official:ref=* as I don't believe that these are verifiable on the ground in any way. I'd be interested in what others think (these council based refs do appear elsewhere in the country: I can't recall ever seeing one on a road sign). I have seen one somewhere in Cornwall, so I don't think we can rely on the renderer to decide whether to show it. Your approach with official:ref for anything not signposted and normal ref for signposted C roads seems best to me. Derick -- http://derickrethans.nl - http://xdebug.org Like Xdebug? Consider a donation: http://xdebug.org/donate.php twitter: @derickr and @xdebug ___ Talk-GB mailing list Talk-GB@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-gb
Re: [Talk-GB] Refs on Tertiary Unclassifed Roads in Highland
On 2013-03-17 14:02, sk53.osm wrote: Yes, I believe in some cases they are signposted: in which case a ref=* is entirely appropriate. W.r.t other commenters, I do not believe that it is the role of OSM to hold internal identifiers, however authoritative, for any object as a matter of course. Certainly they should not be placed in tags whose usage is widely used for both renderers and many other applications (For instance, I don't want navit to tell me turn left into U1699 MacNaughton Crescent [1]). Otherwise we'll start putting NLPG ref=* on every address, or if copyright permits, OSGB TOIDs on every object. Surely we aim to create our own map, not some copy of what the council holds. Our map is a synthesis of many, many sources - that's part of the power of OSM. Facts are facts, so it shouldn't be a surprise that they are the same on different maps. Either the road IS the A123, or it isn't. How that gets rendered/used depends which source domain you choose to reflect in the ref tag. The power to number roads (in the sense we are talking about here) is vested in some body; if they say it is the A123 then that's the end of the story from that point of view. The wiki page for ref=* suggests using official_ref=* for the authoritative information when this differs from the evidence on the ground. A secondary consideration is that we know that many of these 'authoritative' sources contain errors, both of commission and omission (I've blogged about several types of these). Like OSM and OSGB data, I am sure local council data are also prone to time-based degradation. A significant service which OSM can provide is a second independent look at the geography of Britain. Surely the point of having an authoritative source, is that is cannot contain errors - it IS the truth, by definition. It can contain unintended values, but that's different. If the highways authority has resolved to reclassify a road, but has omitted so far to reflect that in the database, then a truly authoritative database would still be correct; it can only be an error if you say that the highways committee minutes are authoritative and the database is merely a derivation. My argument here is one of definition and semantics, but I think that's quite important when the information providers and consumers need to understand each other unambiguously. Can you give links to your blogs? I'm also interested in the criteria that Highland use to classify roads as tertiary or minor. The Links: -- [1] http://www.openstreetmap.org/browse/way/187103578 [2] http://derickrethans.nl [3] http://xdebug.org [4] http://xdebug.org/donate.php [5] http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-gb ___ Talk-GB mailing list Talk-GB@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-gb
Re: [Talk-GB] Refs on Tertiary Unclassifed Roads in Highland
SK53 wrote: I'd be interested in what others think (these council based refs do appear elsewhere in the country: I can't recall ever seeing one on a road sign). I agree very, very strongly that unsignposted C-road numbers (or U, or D, or E, or whatever) should not be placed in the ref tag. It breaks people's expectations of OSM data (and it's not a harmless breakage - any turn-by-turn router which prefers refs over names will give out unfollowable directions). When Paul says However, isn't the issue more about the renderers and routing rules knowing that C-number roads are never signposted? then I see his point, but I don't believe it's realistic for us to demand that this UK-specific rule is implemented in every worldwide renderer and router. Better, and just as easy, to use another tag. Personally I use admin_ref but would be just as happy with official:ref. cheers Richard -- View this message in context: http://gis.19327.n5.nabble.com/Refs-on-Tertiary-Unclassifed-Roads-in-Highland-tp5753484p5753518.html Sent from the Great Britain mailing list archive at Nabble.com. ___ Talk-GB mailing list Talk-GB@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-gb
Re: [Talk-GB] Refs on Tertiary Unclassifed Roads in Highland
Apart from C, D, U etc roads, there are also many A and B roads which officially have a number but that number isn't signposted anywhere. For example in Derby, there is the A601 (Inner Ring Road), A5194 (London Rd) and B6000 (road to railway station). I'm fairly certain there isn't a single signpost which refers to these numbers but someone has added the ref into OSM. In London also there seem to be a lot of B roads which aren't signed, yet a ref tag has been added, such as Brick Lane (which isn't even really suitable as a through route to vehicles). I think as has been argued for the tertiary/unclassified roads, that it would be sensible to retag the refs on those roads to official:ref, admin_ref or something similar. Cheers, Paul Williams (Paul The Archivist) ___ Talk-GB mailing list Talk-GB@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-gb
Re: [Talk-GB] Refs on Tertiary Unclassifed Roads in Highland
On 17 March 2013 09:54, sk53.osm sk53@gmail.com wrote: I've noticed that many minor roads in the Highland Region of Scotland have been tagged with ref=[CU] based on a PDF document from the regions transport department. I've altered a few of these where I've encountered them to official:ref=* as I don't believe that these are verifiable on the ground in any way. I'd be interested in what others think (these council based refs do appear elsewhere in the country: I can't recall ever seeing one on a road sign). I don't think whether or not the reference numbers appear on signs is relevant at all. If the road has an official reference number C616 (and it can be verified it in some way) then I don't why that shouldn't be tagged using the key that's designed for primary official reference numbers, i.e. ref=C616. I would say that altering our tagging to avoid these numbers appearing on maps or in directions is to a large extent tagging for the render / router. The reference number *is* C616. Whether or not a map or router chooses to use that is something for the map or router to decide. Yes it will be hard to make these decisions at times, and maybe the OSM data should contain hints, but I'm not sure altering how we store the reference number is the best way to help. I would imagine that there are also going to be lots of cases of rural road with names where the name is well known to locals (and the postman) but is never actually signed anywhere. (Typically the road leaving one village and heading for the next will be named after the village it is heading to, but there may not be any signs to that effect.) Should we also not put this name in the name tag, because it isn't signed with that name on the ground, and routers using the name will confuse their users? I don't think there's any getting away from having good routers / navigation software adopting country-specific rules for how to describe different classes of road to users. For any cases where we may need to deviate from these country-defaults, perhaps we need a tag that describes what the road is or is not signed as on the ground. (If you really want to do navigation well, you would need to know what each road is signed as at each junction. On UK road signs outside residential areas, it's usually the major destination that's signed at junctions with a road number for A and B roads, rather than a name. So simply removing C and U reference numbers won't actually help that much. Users of navigation software would then either get an equally confusing name or nothing, rather than what is actually written on the sign at the junction.) Robert. -- Robert Whittaker ___ Talk-GB mailing list Talk-GB@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-gb
Re: [Talk-GB] Refs on Tertiary Unclassifed Roads in Highland
On 17/03/2013 19:02, Robert Whittaker (OSM lists) wrote: I would say that altering our tagging to avoid these numbers appearing on maps or in directions is to a large extent tagging for the render / router. The reference number *is* C616. Maybe in these cases some way of indicating to data users that it's not visible on the ground is required? The Scottish example up the thread: http://www.openstreetmap.org/browse/way/187103578 did have a source_ref:ref, but that doesn't itself indicate there is no sign so this is not actually useful as a reference. For bus stops, physically_present=no has had some use: http://taginfo.openstreetmap.org/keys/physically_present#overview Could that, or something more appropriate to road reference numbers, be used here? Obviously that would require an actual survey (something that may not have happened in this case), but that's surely something that should happen anyway. Cheers, Andy ___ Talk-GB mailing list Talk-GB@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-gb
Re: [Talk-GB] Refs on Tertiary Unclassifed Roads in Highland
Someoneelse wrote: Could that, or something more appropriate to road reference numbers, be used here? Ah, déjà vu. http://lists.openstreetmap.org/pipermail/talk-gb/2011-May/011628.html cheers Richard -- View this message in context: http://gis.19327.n5.nabble.com/Refs-on-Tertiary-Unclassifed-Roads-in-Highland-tp5753484p5753547.html Sent from the Great Britain mailing list archive at Nabble.com. ___ Talk-GB mailing list Talk-GB@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-gb
[Talk-GB] Map Man Series 2 Repeated on BBC iPlayer
Just a note to mention that this is being repeated on Saturday mornings on BBC2 and of course now on iPlayer: http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b0078y2t/Map_Man_Series_2_Bartholomews_Cycling_Map_of_England_and_Wales/ A must see for map, walking, cycling, history, geography enthusiasts or any combination thereof. Be Seeing You - Rob. If at first you don't succeed, then skydiving isn't for you. ___ Talk-GB mailing list Talk-GB@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-gb
