[HOT] Introducting myself + questions about "Highway Tag Africa" standards

[Vincent Dawans]

Hello:

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.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.Seeing all that good work got me 
interested in getting involved.

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...

I also stared updating the map for Kayes itself (it needs some 
attention). 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.

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".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.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: 
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trans-African_Highway_network

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.http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dakar-Ndjamena_Highway.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.).

I feel that these roads would benefit from being more 
consistently"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."

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...

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.

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.

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.

Sincerely,

Vincent Dawans

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