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

Tue Mar 4 19:31:20 UTC 2014

Hi Vincent,

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.

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.

Note that you should find various discussions on the subject on the Hot list in 2013.

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. 

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.

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.

It is surely welcome if you propose to revise the classification for the major roads being part of theTrans-African Highway Network or others.

Regard

Pierre 

________________________________
 De : Vincent Dawans <dawansv at gmail.com>
À : hot at openstreetmap.org 
Envoyé le : Lundi 3 mars 2014 21h14
Objet : [HOT] Introducting myself + questions about "Highway Tag Africa"	standards

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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