On Thu, 27 Aug 2009 08:10:01 +0200, Renaud Martinet <kar...@gmail.com> wrote: > On Wed, Aug 26, 2009 at 7:47 PM, Richard Fairhurst<rich...@systemed.net> > wrote: >> Renaud Martinet wrote: >>> I guess that the highway tag used to describe physical features >>> of different types of roads back when OSM was quite UK-centric. >> >> Nope - UK highway tagging, which was of course the original, has always >> largely been aligned to administrative classifications. >> >> highway=motorway -> UK motorway (Mx or Ax(M)) >> highway=trunk -> UK primary A-road (Ax with green signs) >> highway=primary -> UK non-primary A-road - yes, really (Ax with >> black/white signs) >> highway=secondary -> UK B-road (Bx) >> >> We do have a super special, very rarely used exemption known as the >> Oxford High Street Exemption, though. >> >> cheers >> Richard >> > > Sure I used a shortcut here. :) > > But most of the values of the highway tag were corresponding to a type > of road: motorway would be 2x2 with central seperator, trunk would be > mostly the same but with the possibility of smaller roads directly > leading onto the trunk (no sliproad), etc. > I know that the trunk value is the one that forced us to consider the > highway tag a bit differently than what was on the map features at the > time, because we have nothing like that. And it's probably the same > for other countries. So we used the highway tag to describe the > importance in the road network. > > > Renaud. > I think the best way to solve this is for each country to define its needs. Norway have made very good definitions of their highways, while Brazil where I live now are still trying to define it.
For Brazil we have 3 sources of funding (+ private, but that is usually on license for one of the 3), Federal, State and Municipal, and 6 physical differences, small unpaved, small paved, medium unpaved, medium paved, large unpaved, large unpaved. Trunc and Motorway is easy to spot as they are separated by distance, have multiple lanes, construction of intersections, usage of light signals etc. The other types of road is a little tougher to destinguish. Even small unpaved roads have free-flow intersections, so that cannot be used as an identifier. IMO physical, legal, and administrative (funding) classifications should be tagged, some of these can be surface, lanes, (the dredded) smoothness, ref (in Brazil this can identify all federal and stately roads), network, maxspeed (and eventually minspeed), traffic_signal, etc can all be used for this. I do not believe it is possible to get a global consensus on the use of the existing highway tag, and national definitions are necessary for getting cinsistant tagging schemas. Just my R$0,02. -- Brgds Aun Johnsen via Webmail _______________________________________________ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
