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orphans: 2; white-space: normal; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: separate; -webkit-border-horizontal-spacing: 0px; -webkit-border-vertical-spacing: 0px; color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: 'Lucida Grande'; font-size: 12px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; -webkit-text-decorations-in-effect: none; text-indent: 0px; -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; text-transform: none; orphans: 2; white-space: normal; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: separate; -webkit-border-horizontal-spacing: 0px; -webkit-border-vertical-spacing: 0px; color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: 'Lucida Grande'; font-size: 11px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; -webkit-text-decorations-in-effect: none; text-indent: 0px; -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; text-transform: none; orphans: 2; white-space: normal; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px; "><div style="font-family: 'Lucida Grande'; font-size: 11px; "><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><blockquote type="cite"><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><font face="Helvetica" size="3" color="#000000" style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; color: #000000"><b>From: </b></font><font face="Helvetica" size="3" style="font: 12.0px Helvetica">Steve Hill <<a href="mailto:steve@nexusuk.org">steve@nexusuk.org</a>></font></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><font face="Helvetica" size="3" color="#000000" style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; color: #000000"><b>Date: </b></font><font face="Helvetica" size="3" style="font: 12.0px Helvetica">9 July 2008 15:36:03 BDT</font></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><font face="Helvetica" size="3" color="#000000" style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; color: #000000"><b>To: </b></font><font face="Helvetica" size="3" style="font: 12.0px Helvetica"><a href="mailto:talk@openstreetmap.org">talk@openstreetmap.org</a></font></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><font face="Helvetica" size="3" color="#000000" style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; color: #000000"><b>Subject: </b></font><font face="Helvetica" size="3" style="font: 12.0px Helvetica"><b>[OSM-talk] Misclassified roads</b></font></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font: normal normal normal 12px/normal 'Lucida Sans'; min-height: 15px; "><br></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><font face="Lucida Sans" size="3" style="font: 12.0px Lucida Sans">Following the approval of the highway=road tag, I've set about aggressively changing a lot of the highway=unclassified roads around Swansea, that I believe are misclassified, to highway=road, with the intention that they can then be surveyed and reclassified correctly.</font></div></blockquote><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><br></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; ">If you believe they are wrongly tagged (I would avoid the word "misclassified" when referring to an unclassified road ;-) presumably you have a good idea what classification they are, so why not just re-tag them as primary, tertiary or whatever?</div><br><blockquote type="cite"><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font: normal normal normal 12px/normal 'Lucida Sans'; min-height: 15px; "><br></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><font face="Lucida Sans" size="3" style="font: 12.0px Lucida Sans">However, after starting to do this, I've realised just how many of the roads are misclassified - I'd estimate that well over 80% of the roads tagged as highway=unclassified are, infact, not unclassified roads.</font></div></blockquote><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><br></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; ">How on earth did you arrive at this figure? Wouldn't 'guess wildly' be a better verb than 'estimate'?</div><br><blockquote type="cite"><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><font face="Lucida Sans" size="3" style="font: 12.0px Lucida Sans"> So I'm wondering about the merits of changing *all* the highway=unclassified roads in the area to highway=road so that the whole lot can be classified appropriately from scratch.</font></div></blockquote><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><br></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; ">No way! I personally have mapped hundreds of roads, a high proportion of them unclassified (and I suspect I am not the only one who knows what this means) and would not want anyone 'aggressively changing' them.</div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><br></div><blockquote type="cite"><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><font face="Lucida Sans" size="3" style="font: 12.0px Lucida Sans">This would make it obvious which roads really are unclassified and which need to be checked.</font></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font: normal normal normal 12px/normal 'Lucida Sans'; min-height: 15px; "><br></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><font face="Lucida Sans" size="3" style="font: 12.0px Lucida Sans">What are peoples' views on this? I imagine that much of the OSM world is affected in the same way, and this renders the highway=unclassified tag relatively meaningless in it's current state. Should there be a global reclassification to fix this, or is there a better way?</font></div></blockquote><br></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; ">There's always a better way. I suspect the motorway/trunk/primary/secondary/tertiary/unclassified hierarchy was derived from Britain's highway classification system, since it appears to be a perfect match and OSM's roots are here. I don't have much knowledge of how roads are classified elsewhere, but I guess most countries have classification systems which can be made to correspond to this hierarchy. The grey area for me is in the tertiary/unclassified/service/residential area. C-class roads in the UK are not labelled as such on road signs or maps (and of course we shouldn't look at maps as this might infringe copyright ;-) so if you don't work for the local highway authority you can only guess at what's tertiary and what's unclassified. In rural areas I tend to tag roads wide enough for cars to pass as tertiary and narrow lanes as unclassified. How many houses are needed for the residential tag is obviously a matter of judgement as is application of the service tag. I have seen some wrongly tagged roads but I would guess nearer 5% than 80%.</div><div><font class="Apple-style-span" face="'Lucida Sans'" size="3"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 12px;"><br></span></font></div></div><font class="Apple-style-span" color="#606040" face="Helvetica" size="3"></font></span></span></span></span></span></span></span><br class="Apple-interchange-newline"></span></span></span><br class="Apple-interchange-newline"> </div><br></body></html>