[OSM-newbies] postcodes, housenames, speed limits

[Andy Robinson (blackadder)]

Dermot McNally wrote:
>Sent: 24 April 2008 9:26 AM
>To: newbies at openstreetmap.org
>Subject: Re: [OSM-newbies] postcodes, housenames, speed limits
>
>2008/4/24 Andy Robinson (blackadder) <blackadderajr at googlemail.com>:
>
>>  Yes, I add them sporadically as I have time. The number of lanes should
>be
>>  the number of lanes that make up the way. So for a divided road where
>there
>>  are too ways like a motorway then it would be lanes=4 for a normal three
>>  lane motorway (because of the hard shoulder). Most dual carriageways
>would
>>  be 2. For single carriageway roads the lanes will normally be 2 with 1
>for
>
>I have a problem with this interpretation. A hard shoulder should not
>count towards the lane total. If you can't drive in it, it isn't a
>lane, IMO. If we feel we wish to capture the existence of a hard
>shoulder then that's another discussion.

I was expecting someone to point this out. My take is that the root tag is
the the highway and it has a number of lanes, not all of them necessarily
used. For instance, the M42 around Birmingham now has hard shoulder running
at certain times. So lanes=4 is right. The reason the physical number of
lanes ought to be 4 in my view is that in most countries, at least for new
roads, there is a standard lane width, therefore you can draw the road width
to scale if you like just knowing the number of lanes and the standard width
of a lane.

having said all that I agree that knowing that only three lanes of a
motorway can be used is important too, so I would suggest this be another
tag, running_lanes=3. Its really only motorways where this issue crops up
(plus a few 3 lane roads where the central lane has been chevroned) so
having two tags for motorways and the few exceptions is probably no big
deal.

But anyway, this is only my view and a larger set of the userbase may have a
different opinion.

Cheers

Andy


>
>Dermot
>
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