Re: [Talk-us] proposed first principles for United States road tagging
OK OK. Shot down, shot down (not just by you). I guess since I work for an MPO that classifies roads according to their function, I have a pointy headed definition of function as something that cannot be done by people on the ground, and the results of which are not great for general purpose mapping. My final thought on the subject is that if the OSM paradigm is map what's on the ground, I think the combined wisdom of the crowd will bear a dataset that meets your needs by using direct observational classification. Functional classification is indirect and not, what's on the ground. -Original Message- From: talk-us-boun...@openstreetmap.org [mailto:talk-us-boun...@openstreetmap.org] On Behalf Of Alan Mintz Sent: Thursday, March 04, 2010 5:12 PM To: talk-us@openstreetmap.org Subject: Re: [Talk-us] proposed first principles for United States road tagging At 2010-03-04 09:38, McGuire, Matthew wrote: ... A road's Observed Character is what kind of road it appears to be to a person on the road. For general purpose maps, using observed character to classify the roads intends to match a person expectations to what they see on the ground. Character is highly correlated with function, but is not the same. I think Observed Character is what OSM is trying to achieve with the highway tag. I think this because the OSM tag descriptions for highways have photos and describe how the road looks, and you cannot determine system or function from a photograph. I also think it is what the Census Feature Class Code definitions describe. I disagree. Even if this is what was intended, it's certainly less useful than the others. When I zoom out a certain amount, what I want to see is the local (aka residential in OSM) roads disappear. Further out still, I want to see the tertiary roads disappear, etc. This is what's useful when trying to map a route through an unknown area - you want to stick to the main roads that get you there with better road conditions, fewer intersections, etc. As an example, in this area: http://www.openstreetmap.org/?lat=34.426lon=-117.664zoom=11layers=B000FTF , 2-land paved roads are few and far between, making them important tertiary or secondary connections. A road with the same characteristics in the city would be unclassified, as there are much better roads. It's all relative to the area, which is why I don't think it's reasonable to classify by any objective characteristics - you have to know or survey the area in order to know how to classify them. Perhaps some people with a lot of experience may be able to do this from satellite imagery. I believe this closely matches what I see in transportation sections of a city's general plan. I think it's useful to use these as guidelines when classifying roads. Many cities/counties of any reasonable size make these available on their website. They usually have: - freeway, expressway, etc. = OSM motorway or trunk - primary arterial = OSM primary - secondary arterial = OSM secondary - minor arterial and/or collector = OSM tertiary - local = OSM residential or unclassified -- Alan Mintz alan_mintz+...@earthlink.net ___ Talk-us mailing list Talk-us@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-us ___ Talk-us mailing list Talk-us@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-us
Re: [Talk-us] proposed first principles for United States road tagging
On 12 March 2010 08:44, Paul Johnson ba...@ursamundi.org wrote: On Tue, 09 Mar 2010 17:31:19 +, Emilie Laffray wrote: One of the national road that I used regularly in France (N154) is very interesting as you go from what you would consider to just a secondary road to a primary road and back to a secondary road in some locations. The route is giving us some consistency for the location of the entire route, but that is it.br /divbr/divEmilie Laffraybr Well, a primary route would be a national route... Well not necessarily. The state recently demoted route for administrative purposes. They are the same roads except that now it is the regions that are taking care of them. They are now departemental roads. That doesn't the fact that they are still primary roads. Administrative classification doesn't tell you how important or even the kind of roads it is. Emilie Laffray ___ Talk-us mailing list Talk-us@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-us
Re: [Talk-us] proposed first principles for United States road tagging
On Tue, 09 Mar 2010 17:31:19 +, Emilie Laffray wrote: One of the national road that I used regularly in France (N154) is very interesting as you go from what you would consider to just a secondary road to a primary road and back to a secondary road in some locations. The route is giving us some consistency for the location of the entire route, but that is it.br /divbr/divEmilie Laffraybr Well, a primary route would be a national route... ___ Talk-us mailing list Talk-us@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-us
Re: [Talk-us] proposed first principles for United States road tagging
On Tue, 09 Mar 2010 21:37:17 -0500, Anthony wrote: How so? I said motorway and/or trunk roads. Any roads which don't qualify as motorways would be trunks. But expressways are trunks. Can you provide an example of an expressway that isn't paved and isn't divided? ___ Talk-us mailing list Talk-us@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-us
Re: [Talk-us] proposed first principles for United States road tagging
On Tue, 09 Mar 2010 21:39:15 -0500, Anthony wrote: If bicycles aren't prohibited, it's not a motorway. Then most of the US doesn't have motorways, by your definition; an idea I'm pretty sure most would find to be absurdist. ___ Talk-us mailing list Talk-us@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-us
Re: [Talk-us] proposed first principles for United States road tagging
On Fri, Mar 12, 2010 at 3:45 AM, Paul Johnson ba...@ursamundi.org wrote: On Tue, 09 Mar 2010 21:37:17 -0500, Anthony wrote: How so? I said motorway and/or trunk roads. Any roads which don't qualify as motorways would be trunks. But expressways are trunks. All of them? If you say so. Can you provide an example of an expressway that isn't paved and isn't divided? Maybe. What's your definition of expressway? ___ Talk-us mailing list Talk-us@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-us
Re: [Talk-us] proposed first principles for United States road tagging
On Fri, Mar 12, 2010 at 8:52 PM, Anthony o...@inbox.org wrote: On Fri, Mar 12, 2010 at 3:45 AM, Paul Johnson ba...@ursamundi.org wrote: On Tue, 09 Mar 2010 21:37:17 -0500, Anthony wrote: How so? I said motorway and/or trunk roads. Any roads which don't qualify as motorways would be trunks. But expressways are trunks. All of them? If you say so. Hmm. The Veterans Expressway (589) is a motorway. http://www.openstreetmap.org/?lat=28.1845lon=-82.5419zoom=13layers=B000FTF So no, not all expressways are trunks. ___ Talk-us mailing list Talk-us@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-us
Re: [Talk-us] proposed first principles for United States road tagging
On Mon, 08 Mar 2010 09:40:47 -0500, Anthony wrote: On Mon, Mar 8, 2010 at 9:36 AM, Anthony o...@inbox.org wrote: The important, worldwide criteria that I'd expect is this: *Motorways are exclusive to motor vehicle traffic. *trunks are the most important roads in a geographic area which aren't motorways. As a corollary to this, Alaska should have several motorway and/or trunk roads, regardless of whether or not they are interstates, fake interstates, paved, unpaved, divided, undivided, etc. That would violate the basic definition of the word motorway as it is commonly understood in the English language. http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/motorway I would assume they are paved, and I would assume they connect between the major cities in Alaska and/or with major cities in Canada. But I have no idea what other criteria they might meet. I'm sure someone more familiar with Alaska can do so. There's at least one motorway in Alaska, though it's not particularly long. There's not exactly the population density or climate to really make building such a large highway possible outside all but the largest cities. ___ Talk-us mailing list Talk-us@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-us
Re: [Talk-us] proposed first principles for United States road tagging
On Mon, Mar 8, 2010 at 5:18 PM, Paul Johnson ba...@ursamundi.org wrote: On Sat, 06 Mar 2010 17:21:17 -0500, Anthony wrote: Yeah. Motorway is simple. A road designated exclusively for motor vehicles. That's not true for most of America (as only 23 states prohibit bicycles and pedestrians on freeways). It's not true? Freeway is not the same as motorway. You gave the definition of motorway yourself. designed for highhttp://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/high speed http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/speed traffichttp://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/traffic, having restrictions http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/restriction on the vehicle http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/vehicle typeshttp://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/type permitted http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/permitted. Motorway, by definition, is exclusive to motor vehicles. If bicycles aren't prohibited, it's not a motorway. ___ Talk-us mailing list Talk-us@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-us
Re: [Talk-us] proposed first principles for United States road tagging
On Sun, Mar 7, 2010 at 10:01 PM, Paul Johnson ba...@ursamundi.org wrote: Anthony wrote: I'm not sure what you mean by work differently. The laws of different states are different, so the information which needs to be presented by the map is different. The maps, therefore, are going to be different. I wouldn't expect the same map to work differently in different places, because I wouldn't expect the same map in different places. So you're suggesting a 300+ way fork of OSM? It's entirely possible I'm wrong here (since I'm not paying as close attention to this thread as others) but I believe the recommendations here are to add tags which correspond to local standards. Once that's done, other tags which may be more subjective can be added for simplicity, and the renderer can use either the exact tagging scheme that makes sense locally, or else it can use the more generalized (but less precise) tags. - Serge ___ Talk-us mailing list Talk-us@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-us
Re: [Talk-us] proposed first principles for United States road tagging
On 7 March 2010 10:46, Paul Johnson ba...@ursamundi.org wrote: Perhaps we should be working more towards worldwide consistency. I don't know about you, but I don't expect the same map to work differently in the UK than it does in Canada, or in Canada differently from the US. So why should the same map work differently in Oregon than it does New York or Washington? I don't know but when I read a map from a different country, I read it with the new context in mind. Maps are highly contextual piece of works. I have lived in France, US, UK, and Curacao, and I can assure that if you expect to give you the same information you are mistaken. Roads that can be considered primary in Curacao will definitely not looked like the one you would see in France, etc... Everything has to be taken with a pinch of salt. I don't believe in absolute systems, but in relative systems. Consistency is a good thing but you have to look on what aspect they need to be consistent. If you are talking about physical consistency then I suspect we don't have enough tags, a primary road in Africa will be quite different than a primary road in Western countries, etc. I partly agree with you but we have to be careful with consistency, especially considering absolute criterias. For example, Google is rendering their maps in the same way around the world even if the roads can be very dissimilar. Emilie Laffray ___ Talk-us mailing list Talk-us@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-us
Re: [Talk-us] proposed first principles for United States road tagging
On Sun, Mar 7, 2010 at 4:01 PM, Paul Johnson ba...@ursamundi.org wrote: Anthony wrote: I'm not sure what you mean by work differently. The laws of different states are different, so the information which needs to be presented by the map is different. The maps, therefore, are going to be different. I wouldn't expect the same map to work differently in different places, because I wouldn't expect the same map in different places. So you're suggesting a 300+ way fork of OSM? Hmm, not that I know of. But maybe you're right. What would you consider a 300+ way fork (that you believe I was suggesting)? I certainly don't suggest having different databases. The important, worldwide criteria that I'd expect is this: *Motorways are exclusive to motor vehicle traffic. *trunks are the most important roads in a geographic area which aren't motorways. *primary, secondary, and tertiary roads are, in that order, less important than trunk roads *residential roads are generally used primarily for non-through-traffic *a road which connects between a primary and a tertiary or residential road, which is not itself a residential road, is probably a secondary road However, this is pretty much all subjective. So I think we need to adopt objective standards, on a state by state basis. Alternatively, we should just call everything that isn't a motorway a road, tag it with the appropriate features, and use some automated process to figure out the expected relative volume of traffic on a road in order to color it appropriately. ___ Talk-us mailing list Talk-us@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-us
Re: [Talk-us] proposed first principles for United States road tagging
On Mon, Mar 8, 2010 at 9:36 AM, Anthony o...@inbox.org wrote: The important, worldwide criteria that I'd expect is this: *Motorways are exclusive to motor vehicle traffic. *trunks are the most important roads in a geographic area which aren't motorways. As a corollary to this, Alaska should have several motorway and/or trunk roads, regardless of whether or not they are interstates, fake interstates, paved, unpaved, divided, undivided, etc. I would assume they are paved, and I would assume they connect between the major cities in Alaska and/or with major cities in Canada. But I have no idea what other criteria they might meet. I'm sure someone more familiar with Alaska can do so. ___ Talk-us mailing list Talk-us@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-us
Re: [Talk-us] proposed first principles for United States road tagging
Anthony wrote: On Sat, Mar 6, 2010 at 4:59 PM, Richard Weait rich...@weait.com wrote: On Sat, Mar 6, 2010 at 3:28 AM, Paul Johnson ba...@ursamundi.org wrote: I think it would be better if greater weight were given to what network a particular road belongs to. Freeway expressway = motorway or trunk, otherwise... US highway = primary State highway = secondary City/county/Forest route = tertiary Whoa! There are too many places, in my experience, where those network memberships do not line up with expectation of physical characteristics. Yeah. Motorway is simple. A road designated exclusively for motor vehicles. The rest should probably be handled on a state by state basis. Europe doesn't have a single tagging scheme for all of its states. Why should the US? Perhaps we should be working more towards worldwide consistency. I don't know about you, but I don't expect the same map to work differently in the UK than it does in Canada, or in Canada differently from the US. So why should the same map work differently in Oregon than it does New York or Washington? ___ Talk-us mailing list Talk-us@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-us
Re: [Talk-us] proposed first principles for United States road tagging
On Sun, Mar 7, 2010 at 5:46 AM, Paul Johnson ba...@ursamundi.org wrote: Anthony wrote: Yeah. Motorway is simple. A road designated exclusively for motor vehicles. The rest should probably be handled on a state by state basis. Europe doesn't have a single tagging scheme for all of its states. Why should the US? Perhaps we should be working more towards worldwide consistency. When objectively describing the features on the ground, sure. But primary/secondary/tertiary don't do that. If we want to achieve worldwide consistency, we should throw primary/secondary/tertiary out the window, and replace them with objective facts. I don't see that happening though, so the next best solution is to come up with objective definitions on a state by state basis. Possibly even more locally than that in some cases. But certainly at least on a state by state basis, since traffic laws are defined on a state by state basis. I don't know about you, but I don't expect the same map to work differently in the UK than it does in Canada, or in Canada differently from the US. So why should the same map work differently in Oregon than it does New York or Washington? I'm not sure what you mean by work differently. The laws of different states are different, so the information which needs to be presented by the map is different. The maps, therefore, are going to be different. I wouldn't expect the same map to work differently in different places, because I wouldn't expect the same map in different places. ___ Talk-us mailing list Talk-us@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-us
Re: [Talk-us] proposed first principles for United States road tagging
On Sun, Mar 7, 2010 at 5:45 AM, Paul Johnson ba...@ursamundi.org wrote: I can think of several interstates that are unpaved and undivided, though all of them are in Alaska. wow that's news to me. Are they limited access ? How do those get tagged? highway=trunk, surface=dirt, divided=no ? The exception that proves the rule means *tests* as in proof-testing gun or armor. ... -- Bill n1...@arrl.net bill.n1...@gmail.com ___ Talk-us mailing list Talk-us@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-us
Re: [Talk-us] proposed first principles for United States road tagging
On 3/7/10 11:19 AM, Anthony wrote: On Sun, Mar 7, 2010 at 11:13 AM, Bill Ricker bill.n1...@gmail.com mailto:bill.n1...@gmail.com wrote: On Sun, Mar 7, 2010 at 5:45 AM, Paul Johnson ba...@ursamundi.org mailto:ba...@ursamundi.org wrote: I can think of several interstates that are unpaved and undivided, though all of them are in Alaska. wow that's news to me. Are they limited access ? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interstate_Highways_in_Alaska They follow various combinations of Alaska Routes, which generally fail to meet Interstate Highway standards, being for the most part two-lane rural highways without controlled access. The federal government established the classification of these roads as Interstate Highways, primarily for funding purposes. ah, but they're not signed, the interstate designation is administrative/political (funding). this is similar to the issue in NY (and probably other places) where there are roads maintained by the state to high standards, with reference route designations, but no signage other that the small green reference markers. putting these designations in a ref tag with a US:whatever network would be misleading to anyone trying to navigate with a map. probably a better example are the unpaved state highways that may be found in some parts of New Hampshire. they do have signage, are they secondary because they're state highways? richard ___ Talk-us mailing list Talk-us@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-us
Re: [Talk-us] proposed first principles for United States road tagging
On Sun, Mar 7, 2010 at 7:50 AM, Anthony o...@inbox.org wrote: On Sun, Mar 7, 2010 at 5:46 AM, Paul Johnson ba...@ursamundi.org wrote: Perhaps we should be working more towards worldwide consistency. yes, please osm is an international project When objectively describing the features on the ground, sure. But primary/secondary/tertiary don't do that. yes, they are functional and it's strange that so many try to put in all the physical and administrative into a single tag. this must fail or we need 50 values for the highway tag If we want to achieve worldwide consistency, we should throw primary/secondary/tertiary out the window, and replace them with objective facts. I don't see that happening though, so the next best solution is to come up with objective definitions on a state by state basis. Possibly even more locally than that in some cases. But certainly at least on a state by state basis, since traffic laws are defined on a state by state basis. not really, just stop putting in more interpretation into the highway tag AND start to add more tags with objective facts. fully agree this can and should be state specific. there are already many tags in use for surface, lane, network but usage should be extended for sure. ___ Talk-us mailing list Talk-us@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-us ___ Talk-us mailing list Talk-us@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-us
Re: [Talk-us] proposed first principles for United States road tagging
Hi, Apollinaris Schoell wrote: Perhaps we should be working more towards worldwide consistency. yes, please osm is an international project I agree that worldwide consistency is good, however it is a target that comes at a price, and one has to carefully think about whether it makes sense economically to pay this price - or if it may be more efficient to reach the same goals on another route! Remember that the free-form tagging we have, where anyone can do what they believe makes sense, is one of the pillars of OSM's success. Working towards worldwide consistency does not necessarily mean creating stricter rules, but in my experience many who talk about this topic have exactly that in mind - the idea is, more or less, always the same: (1) convene some kind of expert group to make decisions, (2) perhaps have the discussions ratified by the current project membership somehow, and (3) find ways to enforce them - voila, consistency by decree. The danger behind such an approach is that it could kill the drive that many mappers have. The let's roll up our sleeves and get something done spirit could suffer if mappers feel controlled/overruled by someone somewhere (witness the many disgruntled Wikipedians coming to OSM and expressing relief about the absence of self-made relevance criteria - just because a decision is carried by a majority doesn't mean it is good for the project). Thus, it *may* be better to accept that people in different countries or even different regions tag their stuff differently, and work on a smart way to handle all this. More work for those using the data but at the same time less of a corset for those creating it. SteveC wrote about this half a year ago, and already saying that he was reviving an old idea: http://lists.openstreetmap.org/pipermail/dev/2009-October/017287.html As discussion progressed he was reminded of the Osmosis TagTransform plugin which can already do a lot of work streamlining an OSM data set. Surely not the answer to everything, but worth investigating. Bye Frederik -- Frederik Ramm ## eMail frede...@remote.org ## N49°00'09 E008°23'33 ___ Talk-us mailing list Talk-us@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-us
Re: [Talk-us] proposed first principles for United States road tagging
Anthony wrote: I'm not sure what you mean by work differently. The laws of different states are different, so the information which needs to be presented by the map is different. The maps, therefore, are going to be different. I wouldn't expect the same map to work differently in different places, because I wouldn't expect the same map in different places. So you're suggesting a 300+ way fork of OSM? ___ Talk-us mailing list Talk-us@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-us
Re: [Talk-us] proposed first principles for United States road tagging
Bill Ricker wrote: On Sun, Mar 7, 2010 at 5:45 AM, Paul Johnson ba...@ursamundi.org wrote: I can think of several interstates that are unpaved and undivided, though all of them are in Alaska. wow that's news to me. Are they limited access ? No, not outside Anchorage, and even then, barely. How do those get tagged? highway=trunk, surface=dirt, divided=no ? I would tag them as secondary, with the AK## state ref numbers since they're not even signed as interstates, but as Alaska state highways. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interstate_Highways_in_Alaska ___ Talk-us mailing list Talk-us@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-us
Re: [Talk-us] proposed first principles for United States road tagging
Richard Welty wrote: probably a better example are the unpaved state highways that may be found in some parts of New Hampshire. they do have signage, are they secondary because they're state highways? I would say so. There's the surface tag, too... surface=gravel, surface=unpaved... ___ Talk-us mailing list Talk-us@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-us
Re: [Talk-us] proposed first principles for United States road tagging
On 7 Mar 2010, at 11:59 , Frederik Ramm wrote: Hi, Apollinaris Schoell wrote: Perhaps we should be working more towards worldwide consistency. yes, please osm is an international project I agree that worldwide consistency is good, however it is a target that comes at a price, and one has to carefully think about whether it makes sense economically to pay this price - or if it may be more efficient to reach the same goals on another route! Remember that the free-form tagging we have, where anyone can do what they believe makes sense, is one of the pillars of OSM's success. Working towards worldwide consistency does not necessarily mean creating stricter rules, but in my experience many who talk about this topic have exactly that in mind - the idea is, more or less, always the same: (1) convene some kind of expert group to make decisions, (2) perhaps have the discussions ratified by the current project membership somehow, and (3) find ways to enforce them - voila, consistency by decree. not that I disagree with you here but the start of the thread contains should, the follow up please where do you read anything about strict rules, experts, enforcement ... The danger behind such an approach is that it could kill the drive that many mappers have. The let's roll up our sleeves and get something done spirit could suffer if mappers feel controlled/overruled by someone somewhere (witness the many disgruntled Wikipedians coming to OSM and expressing relief about the absence of self-made relevance criteria - just because a decision is carried by a majority doesn't mean it is good for the project). Thus, it *may* be better to accept that people in different countries or even different regions tag their stuff differently, and work on a smart way to handle all this. More work for those using the data but at the same time less of a corset for those creating it. there must be a balance, entering data must be easy but also consuming data must be easy too. most mappers are in one or the other form consumers of the data. If cost of consumption is too hight the osm data is useless because for the same cost it can be created in a better form. SteveC wrote about this half a year ago, and already saying that he was reviving an old idea: http://lists.openstreetmap.org/pipermail/dev/2009-October/017287.html As discussion progressed he was reminded of the Osmosis TagTransform plugin which can already do a lot of work streamlining an OSM data set. Surely not the answer to everything, but worth investigating. I know this discussion. discussion didn't go far and for my impression makes direct access to the osm data more difficult. But it could definitely make sense as an API for osm data consuming applications. In a certain way Josm, Potlatch are doing it already with the templates. Adding a translation table to hide the raw tag names and values could be easily done. Bye Frederik -- Frederik Ramm ## eMail frede...@remote.org ## N49°00'09 E008°23'33 ___ Talk-us mailing list Talk-us@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-us
Re: [Talk-us] proposed first principles for United States road tagging
On Sun, Mar 7, 2010 at 16:08, Paul Johnson ba...@ursamundi.org wrote: Richard Welty wrote: probably a better example are the unpaved state highways that may be found in some parts of New Hampshire. they do have signage, are they secondary because they're state highways? I would say so. There's the surface tag, too... surface=gravel, surface=unpaved... Not to be super technical, but in New Hampshire all public roads are state highways. The distinction you are likely referencing is the numbered State routes which are maintained by NH DOT (except some city/town centers) and known as the New Hampshire Highway System. A question that I have is whether or not NH Routes should ever be listed as Primary or Tertiary? I know in Mass its been done using a functional usage criteria, whereas I have used the US Routes get to be Primary, NH Routes Secondary and routes that connect town centers that aren't the other two are tertiary. I know this is the debate that we are having, but it would seem that either we leave it to regions or states to decide or try a one size fits all approach based off the British system which doesn't seem to match up very well (at least terminology wise) with the US and its intricacies. There seem to be two major groups of roads: limited access and everything else. Within those groups there are variations that at some level get tedious in distinguishing between various classifications that depend on routing/lanes/max speed. In some respects a standard is important, but it has to describe and differentiate between the roads. I think that a regional approach, especially in NE, would be best while maintaining some uniformity across the US and World. I would propose more, but I find it difficult given the current structure. It would seem that there be two major tagging classifications could dominate the tagging: 1. administrative (coming from the authorities over it - route numbers, administrative designations of classification, etc.) 2. functional (coming from actual usage criteria, like number of lanes, width, etc) The first is going to be easier to tag and edit, whereas the latter is going to be more intensive with reviewing official GIS data and personal observations. Just some thoughts. I don't propose to reinvent the wheel, maybe this can be accomplished with Relations or current tagging and leave people quibbling over colors to renders? Some thoughts and my two cents. Andrew Sawyer ___ Talk-us mailing list Talk-us@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-us
Re: [Talk-us] proposed first principles for United States road tagging
On Sat, Mar 6, 2010 at 4:59 PM, Richard Weait rich...@weait.com wrote: On Sat, Mar 6, 2010 at 3:28 AM, Paul Johnson ba...@ursamundi.org wrote: I think it would be better if greater weight were given to what network a particular road belongs to. Freeway expressway = motorway or trunk, otherwise... US highway = primary State highway = secondary City/county/Forest route = tertiary Whoa! There are too many places, in my experience, where those network memberships do not line up with expectation of physical characteristics. Yeah. Motorway is simple. A road designated exclusively for motor vehicles. The rest should probably be handled on a state by state basis. Europe doesn't have a single tagging scheme for all of its states. Why should the US? ___ Talk-us mailing list Talk-us@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-us
Re: [Talk-us] proposed first principles for United States road tagging
On Fri, Mar 5, 2010 at 12:20 AM, Apollinaris Schoell ascho...@gmail.com wrote: didn't know this page exists. Fully agreed this is the best way to do. It's not perfect and some deviations will make sense here and there. I suppose adding tags for cfcc and hfcs makes sense as an addition to existing tagging. Using those classifications to replace the judgment and experience of an OSM surveyor on the ground is a bad idea. The cfcc and hfcs both fail in terms of observability by ground surveyors and so those paper classifications are less reliable. Be respectful of the work of surveyors on the ground. ___ Talk-us mailing list Talk-us@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-us
Re: [Talk-us] proposed first principles for United States road tagging
On Thu, Mar 4, 2010 at 12:38 PM, McGuire, Matthew matt.mcgu...@metc.state.mn.us wrote: I see three dimensions of road classification at play here. 1) System 2) Function 3) Observed Character System is the easy one. That is the road system(s) that that the road belongs to especially for signage, but also for road funding channels, and maintenance responsibility. And I agree that in practice, Census Feature Class Codes have been used (incorrectly) to identify the system to which a road belongs. Actually, the CFCCs are based almost entirely on the system to which a road belongs. The Census Bureau just botches it a lot because they're not a highway department. Function describes the role a road plays in a road system and the types of trips (volume and length) it supports based on travel demand and trip generation. This is what the Highway Functional Classification System is designed for. It is used by Metropolitan Planning Organizations to distribute transportation funding. This is what the highway tag should mostly be based on, because that makes the most useful map. A road's Observed Character is what kind of road it appears to be to a person on the road. For general purpose maps, using observed character to classify the roads intends to match a person expectations to what they see on the ground. Character is highly correlated with function, but is not the same. I think Observed Character is what OSM is trying to achieve with the highway tag. No, it's not! Because character is highly correlated with function, it's possible to have a close guess of function based on observed character most of the time. But if we give each highway a classification based entirely on observed character, we'll have sloppy maps that are difficult to understand. I think this because the OSM tag descriptions for highways have photos and describe how the road looks, and you cannot determine system or function from a photograph. You've got it a bit backwards. Because you cannot determine system or function from a photograph, and the people who wrote the tag descriptions were in a mindset of mapping from photos and physical appearances only, the OSM tag descriptions are based on that. I also think it is what the Census Feature Class Code definitions describe. The CFCCs, at least the ones that deal with roads, literally describe a combination of system and observed character, though it can be frequently wrong on either. They translate to things like Interstate, undivided US route, state route in tunnel, and local street. I would like to see all three dimensions. Where the OSM community is trying to go is to use the highway tag for function, the ref tag and route relations for system, and various other tags to describe physical characteristics. Right now, highway=motorway and in some places highway=trunk are tied to (or strongly imply) certain physical characteristics, but I'm working on a proposal to change that slightly. -- David Smith a.k.a. Vid the Kid a.k.a. Bír'd'in Does this font make me look fat? ___ Talk-us mailing list Talk-us@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-us
Re: [Talk-us] proposed first principles for United States road tagging
On 5 Mar 2010, at 3:29 , Richard Weait wrote: On Fri, Mar 5, 2010 at 12:20 AM, Apollinaris Schoell ascho...@gmail.com wrote: didn't know this page exists. Fully agreed this is the best way to do. It's not perfect and some deviations will make sense here and there. I suppose adding tags for cfcc and hfcs makes sense as an addition to existing tagging. Using those classifications to replace the judgment and experience of an OSM surveyor on the ground is a bad idea. The cfcc and hfcs both fail in terms of observability by ground surveyors and so those paper classifications are less reliable. Be respectful of the work of surveyors on the ground. absolutely, the statement was not meant to be evaluated and used by armchair mappers. We have some big problems with this kind of edits where people trace from yahoo or sources like this and mess up the map. ___ Talk-us mailing list Talk-us@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-us ___ Talk-us mailing list Talk-us@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-us
Re: [Talk-us] proposed first principles for United States road tagging
On Wed, Mar 3, 2010 at 10:45 AM, McGuire, Matthew matt.mcgu...@metc.state.mn.us wrote: The US Census Feature Class Code has descriptions of most types types of roads. This would at least tie it to an existing US standard. http://www.census.gov/geo/www/tiger/appendxe.asc This designation exists in many OSM roads tagged with TIGER:CFCC. However most roads could definitely use some refinement. We could strip the TIGER from the tag to just cfcc then refine it from there. The original TIGER import did in fact use CFCCs to determine highway class. It produced values of motorway, motorway_link, primary, secondary, and residential. We've been refining that for 3 years now. The problem is, this comes from the Census Bureau. They really don't care about a road's functional importance. There are CFCCs for many other things besides roads. And the few CFCCs assigned for road features are essentially based on whether the road is an Interstate, a US route, or a State Route, which doesn't correlate well with a road's functional classification. What's more useful is the Highway Functional Classification System. The name sounds like what we want to do. And it's from the Federal Highway Administration, so they actually care about roads. I've also put forward guidelines for translating HFCS to OSM. http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Talk:United_States_roads_tagging#Discussion (Sort of buried in a wall of text. I should probably repost those guidelines in my userspace.) -- David Smith a.k.a. Vid the Kid a.k.a. Bír'd'in Does this font make me look fat? ___ Talk-us mailing list Talk-us@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-us
Re: [Talk-us] proposed first principles for United States road tagging
On 4 Mar 2010, at 9:38 , McGuire, Matthew wrote: I see three dimensions of road classification at play here. 1) System 2) Function 3) Observed Character System is the easy one. That is the road system(s) that that the road belongs to especially for signage, but also for road funding channels, and maintenance responsibility. And I agree that in practice, Census Feature Class Codes have been used (incorrectly) to identify the system to which a road belongs. exactly, we should start tagging this with an operator tag or something similar. many osm mappers don't care but road enthusiasts do. Function describes the role a road plays in a road system and the types of trips (volume and length) it supports based on travel demand and trip generation. This is what the Highway Functional Classification System is designed for. It is used by Metropolitan Planning Organizations to distribute transportation funding. A road's Observed Character is what kind of road it appears to be to a person on the road. For general purpose maps, using observed character to classify the roads intends to match a person expectations to what they see on the ground. Character is highly correlated with function, but is not the same. I think Observed Character is what OSM is trying to achieve with the highway tag. I think this because the OSM tag descriptions for highways have photos and describe how the road looks, and you cannot determine system or function from a photograph. I also think it is what the Census Feature Class Code definitions describe. 2,3 define what a navi or routing engine should use for best/fastest route and there is a wide agreement in many countries that this is how the highway tag should be used. no hard rule defined by either one. also local and relative importance of a road plays a role. In a city a 2-3 lane road might be tertiary but out in the country a primary road may have one lane in each direction. good old discussion on this topic http://www.mail-archive.com/talk-us@openstreetmap.org/msg00594.html I would like to see all three dimensions. Matt -Original Message- From: David ``Smith'' [mailto:vidthe...@gmail.com] Sent: Thursday, March 04, 2010 9:33 AM To: McGuire, Matthew Cc: Nathan Edgars II; talk-us@openstreetmap.org Subject: Re: [Talk-us] proposed first principles for United States road tagging On Wed, Mar 3, 2010 at 10:45 AM, McGuire, Matthew matt.mcgu...@metc.state.mn.us wrote: The US Census Feature Class Code has descriptions of most types types of roads. This would at least tie it to an existing US standard. http://www.census.gov/geo/www/tiger/appendxe.asc This designation exists in many OSM roads tagged with TIGER:CFCC. However most roads could definitely use some refinement. We could strip the TIGER from the tag to just cfcc then refine it from there. The original TIGER import did in fact use CFCCs to determine highway class. It produced values of motorway, motorway_link, primary, secondary, and residential. We've been refining that for 3 years now. The problem is, this comes from the Census Bureau. They really don't care about a road's functional importance. There are CFCCs for many other things besides roads. And the few CFCCs assigned for road features are essentially based on whether the road is an Interstate, a US route, or a State Route, which doesn't correlate well with a road's functional classification. What's more useful is the Highway Functional Classification System. The name sounds like what we want to do. And it's from the Federal Highway Administration, so they actually care about roads. I've also put forward guidelines for translating HFCS to OSM. http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Talk:United_States_roads_tagging#Discussion (Sort of buried in a wall of text. I should probably repost those guidelines in my userspace.) -- David Smith a.k.a. Vid the Kid a.k.a. Bír'd'in Does this font make me look fat? ___ Talk-us mailing list Talk-us@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-us ___ Talk-us mailing list Talk-us@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-us
Re: [Talk-us] proposed first principles for United States road tagging
So, aside from interstates (which it seems like everyone agrees should be tagged as motorways?), should/could System be abstracted out of road tagging definitions? On Thu, Mar 4, 2010 at 11:54 AM, Apollinaris Schoell ascho...@gmail.com wrote: On 4 Mar 2010, at 9:38 , McGuire, Matthew wrote: I see three dimensions of road classification at play here. 1) System 2) Function 3) Observed Character System is the easy one. That is the road system(s) that that the road belongs to especially for signage, but also for road funding channels, and maintenance responsibility. And I agree that in practice, Census Feature Class Codes have been used (incorrectly) to identify the system to which a road belongs. exactly, we should start tagging this with an operator tag or something similar. many osm mappers don't care but road enthusiasts do. Function describes the role a road plays in a road system and the types of trips (volume and length) it supports based on travel demand and trip generation. This is what the Highway Functional Classification System is designed for. It is used by Metropolitan Planning Organizations to distribute transportation funding. A road's Observed Character is what kind of road it appears to be to a person on the road. For general purpose maps, using observed character to classify the roads intends to match a person expectations to what they see on the ground. Character is highly correlated with function, but is not the same. I think Observed Character is what OSM is trying to achieve with the highway tag. I think this because the OSM tag descriptions for highways have photos and describe how the road looks, and you cannot determine system or function from a photograph. I also think it is what the Census Feature Class Code definitions describe. 2,3 define what a navi or routing engine should use for best/fastest route and there is a wide agreement in many countries that this is how the highway tag should be used. no hard rule defined by either one. also local and relative importance of a road plays a role. In a city a 2-3 lane road might be tertiary but out in the country a primary road may have one lane in each direction. good old discussion on this topic http://www.mail-archive.com/talk-us@openstreetmap.org/msg00594.html I would like to see all three dimensions. Matt -Original Message- From: David ``Smith'' [mailto:vidthe...@gmail.com] Sent: Thursday, March 04, 2010 9:33 AM To: McGuire, Matthew Cc: Nathan Edgars II; talk-us@openstreetmap.org Subject: Re: [Talk-us] proposed first principles for United States road tagging On Wed, Mar 3, 2010 at 10:45 AM, McGuire, Matthew matt.mcgu...@metc.state.mn.us wrote: The US Census Feature Class Code has descriptions of most types types of roads. This would at least tie it to an existing US standard. http://www.census.gov/geo/www/tiger/appendxe.asc This designation exists in many OSM roads tagged with TIGER:CFCC. However most roads could definitely use some refinement. We could strip the TIGER from the tag to just cfcc then refine it from there. The original TIGER import did in fact use CFCCs to determine highway class. It produced values of motorway, motorway_link, primary, secondary, and residential. We've been refining that for 3 years now. The problem is, this comes from the Census Bureau. They really don't care about a road's functional importance. There are CFCCs for many other things besides roads. And the few CFCCs assigned for road features are essentially based on whether the road is an Interstate, a US route, or a State Route, which doesn't correlate well with a road's functional classification. What's more useful is the Highway Functional Classification System. The name sounds like what we want to do. And it's from the Federal Highway Administration, so they actually care about roads. I've also put forward guidelines for translating HFCS to OSM. http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Talk:United_States_roads_tagging#Discussion (Sort of buried in a wall of text. I should probably repost those guidelines in my userspace.) -- David Smith a.k.a. Vid the Kid a.k.a. Bír'd'in Does this font make me look fat? ___ Talk-us mailing list Talk-us@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-us ___ Talk-us mailing list Talk-us@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-us ___ Talk-us mailing list Talk-us@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-us
Re: [Talk-us] proposed first principles for United States road tagging
At 2010-03-04 09:38, McGuire, Matthew wrote: ... A road's Observed Character is what kind of road it appears to be to a person on the road. For general purpose maps, using observed character to classify the roads intends to match a person expectations to what they see on the ground. Character is highly correlated with function, but is not the same. I think Observed Character is what OSM is trying to achieve with the highway tag. I think this because the OSM tag descriptions for highways have photos and describe how the road looks, and you cannot determine system or function from a photograph. I also think it is what the Census Feature Class Code definitions describe. I disagree. Even if this is what was intended, it's certainly less useful than the others. When I zoom out a certain amount, what I want to see is the local (aka residential in OSM) roads disappear. Further out still, I want to see the tertiary roads disappear, etc. This is what's useful when trying to map a route through an unknown area - you want to stick to the main roads that get you there with better road conditions, fewer intersections, etc. As an example, in this area: http://www.openstreetmap.org/?lat=34.426lon=-117.664zoom=11layers=B000FTF , 2-land paved roads are few and far between, making them important tertiary or secondary connections. A road with the same characteristics in the city would be unclassified, as there are much better roads. It's all relative to the area, which is why I don't think it's reasonable to classify by any objective characteristics - you have to know or survey the area in order to know how to classify them. Perhaps some people with a lot of experience may be able to do this from satellite imagery. I believe this closely matches what I see in transportation sections of a city's general plan. I think it's useful to use these as guidelines when classifying roads. Many cities/counties of any reasonable size make these available on their website. They usually have: - freeway, expressway, etc. = OSM motorway or trunk - primary arterial = OSM primary - secondary arterial = OSM secondary - minor arterial and/or collector = OSM tertiary - local = OSM residential or unclassified -- Alan Mintz alan_mintz+...@earthlink.net ___ Talk-us mailing list Talk-us@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-us
Re: [Talk-us] proposed first principles for United States road tagging
didn't know this page exists. Fully agreed this is the best way to do. It's not perfect and some deviations will make sense here and there. On 4 Mar 2010, at 15:37 , Kevin Samples wrote: Hi, I am a proponent of using the Highway Functional Classification System, which Alan has described below and is on the wiki http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Highway_Functional_Classification_System I've classified roads in Clarke County, Georgia and the surrounding counties using the HFC System with what I think are good results. http://osm.org/go/ZSCaTrq Kevin On 3/4/2010 6:12 PM, Alan Mintz wrote: At 2010-03-04 09:38, McGuire, Matthew wrote: ... A road's Observed Character is what kind of road it appears to be to a person on the road. For general purpose maps, using observed character to classify the roads intends to match a person expectations to what they see on the ground. Character is highly correlated with function, but is not the same. I think Observed Character is what OSM is trying to achieve with the highway tag. I think this because the OSM tag descriptions for highways have photos and describe how the road looks, and you cannot determine system or function from a photograph. I also think it is what the Census Feature Class Code definitions describe. I disagree. Even if this is what was intended, it's certainly less useful than the others. When I zoom out a certain amount, what I want to see is the local (aka residential in OSM) roads disappear. Further out still, I want to see the tertiary roads disappear, etc. This is what's useful when trying to map a route through an unknown area - you want to stick to the main roads that get you there with better road conditions, fewer intersections, etc. As an example, in this area: http://www.openstreetmap.org/?lat=34.426lon=-117.664zoom=11layers=B000FTF , 2-land paved roads are few and far between, making them important tertiary or secondary connections. A road with the same characteristics in the city would be unclassified, as there are much better roads. It's all relative to the area, which is why I don't think it's reasonable to classify by any objective characteristics - you have to know or survey the area in order to know how to classify them. Perhaps some people with a lot of experience may be able to do this from satellite imagery. I believe this closely matches what I see in transportation sections of a city's general plan. I think it's useful to use these as guidelines when classifying roads. Many cities/counties of any reasonable size make these available on their website. They usually have: - freeway, expressway, etc. = OSM motorway or trunk - primary arterial = OSM primary - secondary arterial = OSM secondary - minor arterial and/or collector = OSM tertiary - local = OSM residential or unclassified -- Alan Mintzalan_mintz+...@earthlink.net ___ Talk-us mailing list Talk-us@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-us ___ Talk-us mailing list Talk-us@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-us ___ Talk-us mailing list Talk-us@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-us
Re: [Talk-us] proposed first principles for United States road tagging
On 3 Mar 2010, at 7:45 , McGuire, Matthew wrote: The US Census Feature Class Code has descriptions of most types types of roads. This would at least tie it to an existing US standard. http://www.census.gov/geo/www/tiger/appendxe.asc This designation exists in many OSM roads tagged with TIGER:CFCC. However most roads could definitely use some refinement. We could strip the TIGER from the tag to just cfcc then refine it from there. Don't think this will help much. I am sure this was used during tiger import already. Dave will know. -Original Message- From: talk-us-boun...@openstreetmap.org [mailto:talk-us-boun...@openstreetmap.org] On Behalf Of Nathan Edgars II Sent: Monday, March 01, 2010 9:19 PM To: talk-us@openstreetmap.org Subject: [Talk-us] proposed first principles for United States road tagging I'm proposing a couple first principles to govern whatever we decide on for tagging. Please discuss here: http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Talk:United_States_roads_tagging#Proposed_first_principles Nathan, thanks for starting this. From the experience in the last years I think it will not work well this way because of the anarchy, lack of time, endless discussions … this wiki page is huge and it will be easier to work on a topic at a time. Set a schedule for completion date discuss till then and document the agreement in the wiki. And then move any discussion elsewhere to have a compact reference as the main page. Just to make clear I am not calling for a dictatorship agreement can be also to disagree and variants can be documented on the main page too with a comment that there is multiple flavors. already now it seems to go into direction of endless discussion with no final agreement as many discussions before. Not sure why I don't get emails for updates on the wiki so it's really hard to follow. ___ Talk-us mailing list Talk-us@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-us ___ Talk-us mailing list Talk-us@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-us ___ Talk-us mailing list Talk-us@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-us
Re: [Talk-us] proposed first principles for United States road tagging
Either way, it's biggest problem is that it isn't filled in rigorously. I'm just throwing it out there as an existing well known set of road classifications designed for the US. -Original Message- From: Apollinaris Schoell [mailto:ascho...@gmail.com] Sent: Wednesday, March 03, 2010 12:00 PM To: McGuire, Matthew Cc: Nathan Edgars II; Talk Openstreetmap; Dave Hansen Subject: Re: [Talk-us] proposed first principles for United States road tagging On 3 Mar 2010, at 7:45 , McGuire, Matthew wrote: The US Census Feature Class Code has descriptions of most types types of roads. This would at least tie it to an existing US standard. http://www.census.gov/geo/www/tiger/appendxe.asc This designation exists in many OSM roads tagged with TIGER:CFCC. However most roads could definitely use some refinement. We could strip the TIGER from the tag to just cfcc then refine it from there. Don't think this will help much. I am sure this was used during tiger import already. Dave will know. -Original Message- From: talk-us-boun...@openstreetmap.org [mailto:talk-us-boun...@openstreetmap.org] On Behalf Of Nathan Edgars II Sent: Monday, March 01, 2010 9:19 PM To: talk-us@openstreetmap.org Subject: [Talk-us] proposed first principles for United States road tagging I'm proposing a couple first principles to govern whatever we decide on for tagging. Please discuss here: http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Talk:United_States_roads_tagging#Proposed_first_principles Nathan, thanks for starting this. From the experience in the last years I think it will not work well this way because of the anarchy, lack of time, endless discussions ... this wiki page is huge and it will be easier to work on a topic at a time. Set a schedule for completion date discuss till then and document the agreement in the wiki. And then move any discussion elsewhere to have a compact reference as the main page. Just to make clear I am not calling for a dictatorship agreement can be also to disagree and variants can be documented on the main page too with a comment that there is multiple flavors. already now it seems to go into direction of endless discussion with no final agreement as many discussions before. Not sure why I don't get emails for updates on the wiki so it's really hard to follow. ___ Talk-us mailing list Talk-us@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-us ___ Talk-us mailing list Talk-us@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-us ___ Talk-us mailing list Talk-us@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-us
