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On 30/08/2010 21:48, Pieren wrote:
<blockquote
cite="mid:AANLkTinyFyaJRbUh40rRYucQYpOXtrmD=GfD8QH6BQF_@mail.gmail.com"
type="cite">
<div class="gmail_quote">
<div>And if you go ahead with this article:<br>
"When boxes or pipes are placed side-by-side to create a width
of
greater than twenty feet, the culvert is defined as a bridge
in the
United States"<br>
<br>
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</blockquote>
And if you go on reading it says " This is a requirement of the
federal bridge inspection standards and ensures that the culvert is
inspected on a regular basis<sup id="cite_ref-0" class="reference"><a
bitly="BITLY_PROCESSED"
href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Culvert#cite_note-0"><span></span><span></span></a></sup>".
So in this case doesn't mean "is a bridge" but "the bit over the top
is defined legally as a bridge so that it has to be inspected to
make sure that it doesn't collapse in the same way that bridges have
to be". <br>
<br>
For info, Chambers (a paper dictionary - remember them?) defines it
as follows:<br>
<br>
'culvert, noun. an arched channel for carrying water beneath a
road, railway, etc. [Perhaps from French "couler" to flow - Latin
"colare".]'<br>
<br>
Naturally, this is a British English definition - it doesn't mean
that Americans using the word for "any part of the engineering used
to send water under and something else over" are wrong; they're just
speaking a different language to me. The use of British English
(actually an England-and-Wales only dialect as far as highway types
go) in OSM is a historical accident, but it's what we've got, and
redefining tag use based on another dialect or a mixture is likely
to just cause a mess. Personally I wouldn't object if someone
started mapping man-made water features in Dutch (they have more
words for them) provided that it was clear what they meant!<br>
<br>
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