<html><body><div style="color:#000; background-color:#fff; font-family:HelveticaNeue, Helvetica Neue, Helvetica, Arial, Lucida Grande, sans-serif;font-size:10pt">Hi Vincent,<br><br>Thanks to come and discuss about this. And I am pleased to have the opportunity to discuss with you and have comments on how usefull are those maps for road navigation. We dont have often some feedback from people travelling in these areas and this is much appreciated. I am also happy to see that you try to have local people to collect data with GPS.<br><br>If we want to progress collectively on this, it's worth take time to discuss before
amending the wiki page. And it would be interesting that some african contributors participate to such discussion. Other HOT coordinators for various Activations might also have something to say about this.<br><br>Note that you should find various discussions on the subject on the Hot list in 2013.<br><br>We initiated the Mali_Highway_tag wiki page in early 2013 to help in the context of the Mali Activation the remote mappers to classify the highways in a more coherent approach.Thus, have the possibility to deliver rapidly a more coherent road map with all the remote mappers contributing to the classification. <br><br>At the time, we had various discussions on both the HOT irc and then HOT discussion list. Later, some discussions suggested that such classification was representative of Africa in general and the page was renamed to Highway_Tag_Africa. As explained in the wiki page, we thougth that it was important to make a difference between the
importance of the road and it's surface / condition.<br><br>It seems interesting to add the trunk and the motorway classifications. Since we need other information then simply classify from observation of the Imagery, I think that such categories should be added in a clearly identified section of the wiki page, probably with a color box. Then I suggest that instructions should be given that these classifications are later added, once the roads have been traced from Imagery. This should be done by experience mappers that do have appropriate information about the road network. Ideally, this step should always be done and had planned to do it for Mali. But we often do not have people witth the local knowledge to revise the road classification and adapt to the context of the country or region like you propose. Plus we had a lot of Activations to take care in 2013.<br><br>It is surely welcome if you propose to revise the classification for the
major roads being part of theTrans-African Highway Network or others.<br><br>Regard<br><div> </div><div><span style="font-style:italic;color:rgb(0, 0, 191);font-weight:bold;">Pierre <br></span><br></div> <div style="font-family: HelveticaNeue, Helvetica Neue, Helvetica, Arial, Lucida Grande, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;"> <div style="font-family: HelveticaNeue, Helvetica Neue, Helvetica, Arial, Lucida Grande, sans-serif; font-size: 12pt;"> <div dir="ltr"> <hr size="1"> <font face="Arial" size="2"> <b><span style="font-weight:bold;">De :</span></b> Vincent Dawans <dawansv@gmail.com><br> <b><span style="font-weight: bold;">À :</span></b> hot@openstreetmap.org <br> <b><span style="font-weight: bold;">Envoyé le :</span></b> Lundi 3 mars 2014 21h14<br> <b><span style="font-weight: bold;">Objet :</span></b> [HOT] Introducting myself + questions about "Highway Tag Africa" standards<br> </font> </div> <div
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<div class="yiv7659109488MsoNormal">Hello:</div>
<div class="yiv7659109488MsoNormal">My name is Vincent Dawans and I am a Senior
Technical
Advisor at Virtue Ventures, a technical firm dedicated to
supporting NGOs and social enterprises
in the developing world.<span style=""> </span>As
a technical
advisor, I do a lot of traveling. I am currently traveling to West
Africa
every 3 months or so. I was last in Mali and got really impressed
with the
accuracy of the openstreetmap layer (I was using the MapWithMe
android app that
gets its data from openstreetmap); certainly the level of details
in Bamako is
quite impressive, enough that I was able to go on long walks
through the back
streets without ever getting lost.<span style="">
</span>Seeing all that good work got me interested in getting
involved.</div>
<div class="yiv7659109488MsoNormal">One of the organizations I work with is a
village-banking
organization around Kayes (Western Mali) and my plan is to give
them gps
receivers so they can start mapping the many villages in which
they work. I got
some old $25 gps receivers online that I will try using for that
purpose... </div>
<div class="yiv7659109488MsoNormal">I also stared updating the map for Kayes itself
(it needs
some attention). <span style=""> </span>However
as I am looking
at the "Highway Tag Africa" standards I am a bit confused as to
the
lack of mention of the "highway=trunk" and
"highway=motorway" tags.</div>
<div class="yiv7659109488MsoNormal">I am going to take West Africa as an example
since this is
what I know. I feel like the main regional roads should be
consistently marked
as "trunk" and not merely "primary".<span style="">
</span>Right now some sections are marked trunk,
other primary. By "regional roads" I mean mostly the roads that
are
part of the new Trans-African Highway Network that is taking
shape.<span style=""> </span>The Trans-African
Highway Network comprises a
series of east/west and north/south roads crossing the continent.
Here is a
good overview of the Trans-African Highway Network:
<a rel="nofollow" class="yiv7659109488moz-txt-link-freetext" target="_blank" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trans-African_Highway_network">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trans-African_Highway_network</a></div>
<div class="yiv7659109488MsoNormal">My personal experience with that network is the
Trans-Sahelian Highway (Trans-African Highway 5), more
specifically its first
section running from Dakar to Ouagadougou which I use on a regular
basis.<span style="">
</span><a rel="nofollow" class="yiv7659109488moz-txt-link-freetext" target="_blank" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dakar-Ndjamena_Highway">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dakar-Ndjamena_Highway</a>.<span style=""> </span>The section running from
Dakar to Ouagadougou
actually splits into 2 branches from Tambacounda, Senegal to Kita,
Mali (one
branch is the original northern road via Kayes Mali, and the other
one is the
brand new southern road via Kenieba and Kati, Mali.).</div>
<div class="yiv7659109488MsoNormal">I feel that these roads would benefit from
being more consistently<span style=""> </span>"upgraded"
from primary to trunk because
they are not only important roads for their respective countries
but are in
fact becoming the backbone of the road network in their respective
regions and
serve as the primary roads crisscrossing the continent. IMHO they
fit the official trunk definition of "The most important roads in
a country's system that aren't motorways."<br>
</div>
<div class="yiv7659109488MsoNormal">Whatever decision is made, some clarification
is necessary
because right now some sections of that network are already marked
as trunk on
the map, but in a very inconsistent manner, with some trunk roads
becoming
primary mid way without reflecting actual changes on the ground.
Here is just
one example for illustration purpose: in Senegal the trunk tag
starts in
Kaffrine and ends in Kotiari, then it becomes trunk once more in
Mali between
Segala and Bamako. In reality there is no reason why the
Dakar-Kaffrine section
and Tambacounda-Segala section should not be marked as trunk as
well -- or all
of it marked as primary; but not a mix of both...</div>
<div class="yiv7659109488MsoNormal">Additionally, the highway=motorway tag also
needs to be
clarified; on the map, motorways are already found, mostly in
Northern and
Southern Africa with some also starting to show up in East and
West Africa. For
instance right now there is a short motorway running from Dakar to
Rufisque--
it's a real motorway, a restricted access road build as per
international
standards -- a first in West Africa I think.</div>
<div class="yiv7659109488MsoNormal">Hence I think the "Highway Tag Africa"
guidelines would
benefit from being expanded with trunk roads and motorway; if
nothing to
clarify the current mixed used of motorway, trunk and primary
tags. I would love
to know what the opinion of the community is on this matter. I am
willing to
help draft some changes to the guidelines if there is some buy-in
for the general idea presented here.</div>
<div class="yiv7659109488MsoNormal">I am new to this mailing list and community, so
I apologize
if this was discussed earlier or if I am not fully informed about
the issue.
Thank you for reading my long (too long) email.</div>
<div class="yiv7659109488MsoNormal">Sincerely,</div>
<div class="yiv7659109488MsoNormal">Vincent Dawans</div>
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