[josm-dev] self-intersecting ways

[Anthony]

On Mon, Mar 22, 2010 at 12:35 AM, Paul Johnson <baloo at ursamundi.org> wrote:

> On Sun, 21 Mar 2010 20:09:43 -0400, Anthony wrote:
>
> > When I lived in New Jersey it was the same way, and I'd imagine it's the
> > same way in most of the United States.
>
> I'd say more research is needed before we call that conclusive.


I guess.  I'd love to hear of a statewide counterexample.  If the
right-of-way doesn't extend beyond the road, where are you supposed to
walk?  (I know of some local situations where there is no walking space on
the side of the road, but not of any entire states where this isn't the
norm.)


> At least
> in Oregon and Washington, street boundaries often extend beyond the
> street for service access and future expansion reasons (plus the local
> governments don't deem it particularly fair to tax folks for property
> extending into the street, preferring to condemn the protruding portions).
>

That's a different question, though.  In OSM, the way which is tagged
highway represents the physical road, right?  I assume this is the case
because we tag dual carriageways as two ways, as there are two physically
separate roadways, whereas there is generally only a single right of way.
Outside of dual carriageways I guess it's ambiguous, unless there's a width
tag, in which case, what is it that we're supposed to measure the width of?
I can think of at least three different possibilities - the paved surface,
the actual lanes used for traffic, and the entire right of way including the
unpaved shoulder and/or the sidewalks and/or the [
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tree_lawn].  Which would you say is correct?