Re: [OSM-talk] Can you recommend good introduction to JOSM for 100% osm newbie?

[Justin Tracey via talk]

On 2020-10-05 6:49 a.m., john whelan wrote:
> I think we underestimate new mappers.  JOSM takes a little more time
> to set up true enough but once set up new mappers can be quite
> productive.  I think it is best if you limit them to adding one or two
> features at a time but for adding buildings nothing beats it with the
> buildings_tool plugin.


For adding lots of buildings quickly, sure, that's definitely what I'd
recommend, but that's not the most common action newbies will be
performing in OSM. And yes, you *can* teach new mappers how to use JOSM,
of course, but IMO the goal should be to make the UI as frictionless as
possible at getting them to understand how mapping works, not getting
them to use the most powerful mapping tools as quickly as possible. Or,
framed another way, I would rather have lots of moderately skilled
contributors all over the world than (unintentionally) gate-keep into
highly skilled contributors in a few places.


To use a programming analogy (sorry, I realize this is useless to
non-programmers), yes, you can teach a complete programming newbie C as
their first language. But if you want them to actually understand the
important core concepts quickly rather than learning the quirks of the
architecture, you're probably better off using something simple like
Python. On a similar note, I use C for my work quite often, but when I
need to write something simple, I'll default to Python; and while I
frequently use (and have even made non-trivial upstream code
contributions to) JOSM, I still default to iD as my go-to editor for
most quick fixes.


>
> Highways, I think it is iD that offers many choices of tags but do we
> really need rural highways in Africa to be tagged as unlit?


Well, for that particular case, my guess is that tag is just as useful
there as it is anywhere.

 - Justin




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Re: [Talk-ca] Proposal to tag Yonge Street in Toronto and York Region as Primary

[Justin Tracey]

In Canada, highway=primary is typically used for what I would call
"highway-like" roads.[0] IMHO, Yonge is a "major" road, but has too many
cross streets to be really considered highway-like, at least for most of
its length. You can look at some of the other highway=primary roads in
the area to see a more typical cross-traffic density. That said, I
certainly wouldn't engage in an edit war over it or anything.

 - Justin

[0]
https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Canadian_tagging_guidelines#Sub-national_and_below

On 2020-07-16 11:28 a.m., Andrew Deng via Talk-ca wrote:
> Hello, I believe Yonge Street in Toronto and York Region (Regional
> Road 1) should be tagged as highway=primary rather than
> highway=secondary as it is tagged now.
>
> Here are some reasons I believe why:
>
> 1) Yonge Street is considered the "Main Street" of Toronto, Thornhill,
> Richmond Hill, and Aurora. It is also a major road in Newmarket.
>
> 2) It is a major thoroughfare throughout the route. In Toronto, the
> Yonge subway follows it and in York Region, Viva bus lanes are being
> built. It also connects to Bradford in the north.
>
> 3) It was a former Ontario King's Highway - Highway 11. Some other
> former King's Highways in the Toronto/York area are tagged as
> highway=primary, such as Highway 27, Highway 7, and Highway 48. 
>
> --
>
>  
>
> Andrew
>
>
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Re: [Talk-ca] WikiProject Canada Post - franchise assessment

[Justin Tracey]

On 2020-06-16 10:16 a.m., john whelan wrote:
>
> Canada Post is part of federal government so there is some sort of
> commitment to Open Data floating around under the Federal government's
> open data initiative.
>
>
As referenced in another emails on this thread, Canada Post is operated
as a company, not a government agency, and has been... less enthused
with the open data initiative than the federal government itself. ;)

 - Justin



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Re: [Talk-ca] WikiProject Canada Post - franchise assessment

[Justin Tracey]

Is it legal to import that data from the Canada Post site?

 - Justin

On Tue, Jun 16, 2020 at 8:04 AM David Nelson via Talk-ca <
talk-ca@openstreetmap.org> wrote:

> I have just finished assessing which post offices in Canada among those we
> have not yet added to OSM are franchises, and which of those franchise
> outlets' parent businesses already appear in our database.  Those such
> locations are now marked in pale red on the project's spreadsheets.  The
> node for each such post office location just has to be positioned right
> next to its respective parent business.  You can determine what each parent
> business is by looking on Canada Post’s own website, or by doing a simple
> web search for the postal code of each such outlet.  With this, we are in a
> position to immediately add nearly 700 more Canada Post outlets across the
> country to OSM.  This would bring the progress of this project to a
> completion measure of just under 48 percent.
>
>
>
> - David E. Nelson
>
> 
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Re: [Talk-ca] Tagging sidewalks as separate ways and issues with bicycle routing

[Justin Tracey]

I was assuming cyclists can figure out a turn indication onto a sidewalk
should instead be interpreted as onto the adjacent street; maybe that's
more difficult than I'd assumed.

The Region of Waterloo allows bicycles on sidewalks in some situations, but
I believe at least most of the constituent cities in it do not. In any
case, it's certainly not provincial law for Ontario.

On Fri, Apr 3, 2020 at 3:16 PM Martin Chalifoux 
wrote:

> When you follow a route with a riding app, you get turn prompts that are
> then incorrect because a sidewalk is selected rather than the street. The
> route is not just a line on a map, it becomes a set of turn-by-turn
> directions eventually.
>
> What cities allow cycling on sidewalks anyway, seriously ? This sounds so
> inadequate. That it is tolerated is one thing, but outright legal or
> encouraged ? Makes no sense to me.
>
> On Apr 3, 2020, at 11:11, Justin Tracey  wrote:
>
> iD leaves all access tags undefined for sidewalks by default, what you're
> seeing are the *implied* values (specifically, highway=footway implies
> motor_vehicle=no, but does not make any implication about bicycle=*; scroll
> down to the raw tags and you'll see both are left undefined). The reason
> sidewalks cannot imply bicycle=no is that's not true in all legal
> jurisdictions. The question is then whether routing engines should take
> legal jurisdiction into account when deciding the default value for
> bicycle=*, the way they do for maxspeed=*. The problem is that maxspeed=*
> has defaults on a uniform provincial granularity, but bicycle=* has an
> arbitrary granularity (any particular sidewalk could be subject to federal,
> provincial, regional, or city laws).
>
> Personally, my approach has been noting when routing engines are taking
> advantage of sidewalks they shouldn't be able to, and tagging those. Most
> sidewalks run parallel to roads, and I assume cyclists/data consumers know
> the respective rules they should be following, even if the routing engine
> doesn't.
>
> On Fri, Apr 3, 2020 at 2:51 PM Martin Chalifoux via Talk-ca <
> talk-ca@openstreetmap.org> wrote:
>
>> Maybe the issue is that in ID and I assume that is the Canadian default
>> value, the bicycle access tag is left undefined. Why isn’t that tag
>> defaulted to no as it is for cars ? Then an explicit yes tag can be added
>> only to the odd place where cycling on a sidewalk is allowed. We are
>> talking routing engines here, not the kid that plays on the street.
>>
>> On Apr 3, 2020, at 10:46, Nate Wessel  wrote:
>>
>> Which routing engines are causing problems exactly? Routing a bicycle on
>> a sidewalk may be appropriate/reasonable in some cases and over short
>> distances where one could be instructed to dismount and walk. I'd be
>> interested to see some of the problematic routes that are being suggested
>> to see if there isn't a more elegant way of resolving this.
>>
>> I personally only use explicit access tags where there is clear signage
>> indicating some type of special access restriction. Otherwise the default
>> should be assumed. Routing engines *should* be able to accommodate
>> region differences in default values without needing to manually tag
>> millions of ways. Whether they can or do allow that is a problem for the
>> people developing the routing engines.
>>
>> Nate Wessel, PhD
>> Planner, Cartographer, Transport Nerd
>> NateWessel.com <https://www.natewessel.com/>
>> On 2020-04-03 10:39 a.m., John Whelan wrote:
>>
>> I'd recommend bicycle=no and I live in Ottawa.  In Ottawa footpaths that
>> connect in general are bicycle=yes as they come under municipal regulation
>> but a sidewalk on a highway comes under provincial legislation which bans
>> bicycles on sidewalks.  Sparks street is fun I think you are not permitted
>> to ride your bicycle but I'm unsure if this is provincial, municipal or it
>> might even be NCC which is federal of course.
>>
>> In the UK they are banned by law but in certain cities the Chief
>> Constable has stated the law will not be enforced within the police force
>> boundaries as a letter of interpretation.  It might be nice for Ottawa to
>> do the same sometime but there again we have City of Ottawa police, OPP,
>> RCMP and of course the PPS.
>>
>> Cheerio John
>>
>> James wrote on 2020-04-03 10:25 AM:
>>
>> I don't think it's more tagging for the renderer as much as it's being
>> more specific(more data) to specify a abstract view: without knowledge of
>> Canadian/Provincial/Municipal laws about biking on sidewalks.
>>
>> I think Montreal and Gatineau are more enforced as Ottawa it i

Re: [Talk-ca] Tagging sidewalks as separate ways and issues with bicycle routing

[Justin Tracey]

iD leaves all access tags undefined for sidewalks by default, what you're
seeing are the *implied* values (specifically, highway=footway implies
motor_vehicle=no, but does not make any implication about bicycle=*; scroll
down to the raw tags and you'll see both are left undefined). The reason
sidewalks cannot imply bicycle=no is that's not true in all legal
jurisdictions. The question is then whether routing engines should take
legal jurisdiction into account when deciding the default value for
bicycle=*, the way they do for maxspeed=*. The problem is that maxspeed=*
has defaults on a uniform provincial granularity, but bicycle=* has an
arbitrary granularity (any particular sidewalk could be subject to federal,
provincial, regional, or city laws).

Personally, my approach has been noting when routing engines are taking
advantage of sidewalks they shouldn't be able to, and tagging those. Most
sidewalks run parallel to roads, and I assume cyclists/data consumers know
the respective rules they should be following, even if the routing engine
doesn't.

On Fri, Apr 3, 2020 at 2:51 PM Martin Chalifoux via Talk-ca <
talk-ca@openstreetmap.org> wrote:

> Maybe the issue is that in ID and I assume that is the Canadian default
> value, the bicycle access tag is left undefined. Why isn’t that tag
> defaulted to no as it is for cars ? Then an explicit yes tag can be added
> only to the odd place where cycling on a sidewalk is allowed. We are
> talking routing engines here, not the kid that plays on the street.
>
> On Apr 3, 2020, at 10:46, Nate Wessel  wrote:
>
> Which routing engines are causing problems exactly? Routing a bicycle on a
> sidewalk may be appropriate/reasonable in some cases and over short
> distances where one could be instructed to dismount and walk. I'd be
> interested to see some of the problematic routes that are being suggested
> to see if there isn't a more elegant way of resolving this.
>
> I personally only use explicit access tags where there is clear signage
> indicating some type of special access restriction. Otherwise the default
> should be assumed. Routing engines *should* be able to accommodate region
> differences in default values without needing to manually tag millions of
> ways. Whether they can or do allow that is a problem for the people
> developing the routing engines.
>
> Nate Wessel, PhD
> Planner, Cartographer, Transport Nerd
> NateWessel.com 
> On 2020-04-03 10:39 a.m., John Whelan wrote:
>
> I'd recommend bicycle=no and I live in Ottawa.  In Ottawa footpaths that
> connect in general are bicycle=yes as they come under municipal regulation
> but a sidewalk on a highway comes under provincial legislation which bans
> bicycles on sidewalks.  Sparks street is fun I think you are not permitted
> to ride your bicycle but I'm unsure if this is provincial, municipal or it
> might even be NCC which is federal of course.
>
> In the UK they are banned by law but in certain cities the Chief Constable
> has stated the law will not be enforced within the police force boundaries
> as a letter of interpretation.  It might be nice for Ottawa to do the same
> sometime but there again we have City of Ottawa police, OPP, RCMP and of
> course the PPS.
>
> Cheerio John
>
> James wrote on 2020-04-03 10:25 AM:
>
> I don't think it's more tagging for the renderer as much as it's being
> more specific(more data) to specify a abstract view: without knowledge of
> Canadian/Provincial/Municipal laws about biking on sidewalks.
>
> I think Montreal and Gatineau are more enforced as Ottawa it is illegal to
> bike on the sidewalk, but people are still doing it, but that's beside the
> point.
>
> On Fri., Apr. 3, 2020, 10:18 a.m. Pierre-Léo Bourbonnais via Talk-ca, <
> talk-ca@openstreetmap.org> wrote:
>
>> Hi!
>>
>> I would like to start a discussion on how we should deal with sidewalks
>> tagged separately, like it is is done in downtown Ottawa and like we are
>> starting to do in the Montreal region.
>>
>> The issue is that by default highway=footway with or without
>> footway=sidewalk should have an implicit bicycle=no by default according to
>> this page:
>> https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/OSM_tags_for_routing/Access_restrictions
>>
>> However, some osm users told me I should tag them with bicycle=no
>> everywhere because routing engines use sidewalks for bicycle routing which
>> is illegal in most part of Canada.
>>
>> What are your thoughts on this ? Should we adapt to routing engines or
>> should routing engines fix the issue themselves?
>>
>> Thanks!
>>
>>
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Re: [Talk-ca] Postcodes in Canada

[Justin Tracey]

In the US, ZIP Codes (the US postal code equivalent) are frequently
emphasized to not correspond to geographic locations, but sets of
addresses. Of course they frequently cluster according to geography (and
the prefixes are indeed assigned to states and regions within the
state), and are often used as stand-ins, but you can't make assumptions
about continuity or proximity for the addresses they correspond with.
Even though I can't find it explicitly worded that way (i.e., "post
codes are address sets, not locations"), it seems to be the same
situation here. Given that, the most "correct" thing to do would be
tagging postal codes in addresses, and not as distinct entities.

The Canada Post website has a tool to lookup the postal code for a
particular address, so if it were released, wouldn't the data they use
to supply that information be good enough for this? It doesn't quite
solve people trying to navigate "to" a particular postal code, but it
seems like that's an ambiguous request anyway.

 - Justin

On 2019-10-02 8:53 p.m., Kevin Farrugia wrote:
> I don't want to rain on the postal code party, and maybe I'm a little
> jaded from using the data, but I use the Postal Code Conversion File
> (PCCF) from Statistics Canada (who get it from Canada Post) at work. 
> In general I would say that the postal code points are in mediocre shape.
>
> Some things I've noticed about the data and postal codes in general:
> * There is usually one postal code point per postal code, although
> there are cases where there can be several points for a postal code. 
> For example, with some postal codes, if you were to make them
> polygons, would generate multiple polygons that are intersected by
> other postal codes.
> * Postal codes, especially rural ones, pop in and out of existence and
> so are a little harder to track and are less permanent than addresses.
> * Postal codes will sometimes jump from one side of a road (even
> municipality) between years as they try to improve accuracy.
> I would check out the Limitations section if you'd like to see
> more: 
> https://www.canadapost.ca/cpc/assets/cpc/uploads/files/marketing/2017-postal-code-conversion-file-reference-guide-en.pdf
>
> Forward Sortation Areas do exist as open data through Statistics
> Canada - StatsCan generates these FSA polygons based on respondents of
> the Census.  There are two limitations to this dataset on which I
> would advise against importing it into OSM:
> 1) Since businesses do not respond to the Census, they generally do
> not have FSAs for large industrial areas.  These areas are covered by
> the nearest FSA that they know about/can define, but this can also
> cause some movements of boundaries from Census to Census.
> 2) Because postal codes are created for the purpose of mail sortation
> and delivery, the FSA boundaries StatsCan is able to create are not exact.
> Here's the reference document if you're
> interested: 
> https://www150.statcan.gc.ca/n1/pub/92-179-g/92-179-g2016001-eng.htm
>
> If at some point they did release it as open data, it might be decent
> enough for the purposes of general geocoding in OSM, I just don't want
> people to think it's as well maintained and reliable as some other
> types of government data.
>
> -Kevin (Kevo)
>
>
> On Wed, 2 Oct 2019 at 20:39, James  > wrote:
>
> funny you should mention geocoder.ca  
>
> The owner of that website was sued by Canada Post because he was
> crowd sourcing postal codes. Just recently (2 ish years ago?) they
> dropped the lawsuit because they knew they didnt have a case(He
> came to the Ottawa meetups a couple of times)
>
> On Wed., Oct. 2, 2019, 8:08 p.m. Jarek Piórkowski,
> mailto:ja...@piorkowski.ca>> wrote:
>
> Yeah, Canada Post currently considers postal codes their
> commercial
> data. Crowd-sourcing all or a substantial amount of full codes
> seems
> infeasible. Crowd-sourcing the forward sortation areas (the
> first A1A)
> seems difficult since verifiability is going to be a problem
> especially around the edges of the areas.
>
> The website OpenStreetMap.org returns results for some postal
> codes
> from a third-party database https://geocoder.ca/?terms=1 which
> is not
> ODbL-compatible either.
>
> Partial mapping is causing some problems with tools like Nominatim
> that attach the nearest tagged postcode to search results, often
> resulting in improper postal codes for reverse address lookups,
> however that is arguably a tooling problem and not an OSM
> problem per
> se.
>
> This isn't going to be pretty until Canada Post is persuaded
> to free
> the data. Call your MP, everybody.
>
> --Jarek
>
> On Wed, 2 Oct 2019 at 17:38, john whelan
> mailto:jwhelan0...@gmail.com>> wrote:
> >
> >