[OSM-newbies] Pavements, pedestrian crossings, road widths, house numbers, parking restrictions, speed limits, public transport timetables

[Serge Wroclawski]

On Thu, Mar 17, 2011 at 8:55 AM, Sam Kuper <sam.kuper at uclmail.net> wrote:


> A pavement is a sidewalk, yes.
> Now, I see from your link that pedestrianised streets and squares are
> handled by OpenStreetMap, but I don't see any examples of roads having
> pavements alongside them.

As per the tag, a road should be tagged with a sidewalk, and the
location of the sidewalk is part of the tag (left, right, both).

>  The implication is that as far as OpenStreetMap is
> concerned, pedestrians share the road surface equally with cars, trucks,
> bikes, buses, motorbikes and so on, which is not normally the case in the
> countries I've visited. In the countries I've visited, pedestrians normally
> walk on pavements alongside the road surface, while the other vehicles I've
> mentioned use the main road surface.

http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Key:sidewalk

Whether folks use the sidewalk tag or a separate way is up to them.

>> http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Crossing
>
> Ah, that's good to know. I didn't see any marked on the area of OSM that I
> looked at, where there should have been some, but presumably they just need
> to be added.

Let me suggest familiarizing yourself with the wiki.


>> > road widths
>>
>> Road widths are something we've traditionally not put on the map
>> because OSM is more focused on toplogical connectivity than actual
>> road width. We do have the number of lanes, so one can extrapolate an
>> approximate width from this value where available.
>
> This doesn't really make sense to me. After all, the shape of a pavement
> isn't a line, and nor is the shape of a road. Both are areas that can be
> traversed more or less freely, as long as one doesn't obstruct them nor (in
> some cases) travel in the wrong direction on certain parts of them.
> A width, expressed in a standard unit of length, I can understand. But what
> counts as a lane?

http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Lane

> For instance, on a road in the UK where I lived for some years, there were
> typically cars parked (entirely legally) on both sides, which left room for
> only one car abreast to drive along the road: if two cars were driving along
> the road and wanted to pass each other, then one of the cars had to pull
> into a parking space to let the other one past.

Was it a designated parking lane?

http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Proposed_features/parking:lane

> The road was therefore wide enough for three cars abreast, but since the
> cars on either side of the road were normally stationary (parked), that sort
> of reduced the effective width of the road to one car. How many lanes would
> this road have, as far as OSM is concerned? One, or three?

This is a question for the tagging list, or help.osm.org

There's also the option to just enter in the width:

http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Key:width

But you'll find most people don't do that. You're free to add it if you like.


>> > house numbers
>>
>> http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Addresses
>
> It's nice to see the examples in Karlsruhe. However, in the UK I haven't yet
> found any areas I'm familiar with that have buildings individually drawn on
> the map with addresses assigned.
> Are there plans to import addresses in bulk, or is it expected that these
> will be inputted by hand? How were the examples around this location
> created? http://www.openstreetmap.org/?lat=49.030752&lon=8.361616&zoom=18&layers=B000FTF

Addresses databases are often license restricted, so must often be
collected manually, except in rare exceptions like Washington, DC, San
Francisco, and I believe Portland.

>> > parking restrictions
>>
>> http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Parking
>> (read the section on the access tag)
>
> Thanks.
> In the UK, there are several different designations that local councils
> apply to given stretches along the sides of given roads. For instance, they
> may have double red lines, single red lines, double yellow lines, single
> yellow lines, parking bays of various kinds (pay & display; residents only;
> disabled only; etc), any of a number of other markings, or no markings at
> all. Typically, councils will publish information about at least some of
> these stretches on their websites, to help people plan their journeys.
> It would be very useful to be able to represent this information in OSM. Can
> it be done?

Those sound like parking lanes, see above.

>> > speed limits
>>
>> http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Key:maxspeed
>
> I downloaded a .osm file for an area of London I know quite well, and it
> contained no maxspeed tags even though most of the streets in it are subject
> to an implicit 30mph speed limit.
> Are there plans to automatically tag urban streets with national urban
> street limits, or is this something that users are expected to do manually
> for the entire world?

Automated edits like the type you've outlined have been disruptive to
the project in the past (ie mass errors) and it's much harder to
identify a mistake in data than it is to identify missing data, so
personally I'd be disinclined to support such a tagging.

But if you want to add it to your routing rules, go ahead.


You'll do yourself a great favor by reading the wiki, and checking out
help.openstreetmap.org because a vast majority of my answers have been
going to the wiki and doing a search.

Then if you have specific questions, I'd suggest asking on help.osm or
else if it's something like your lane question, the tagging list might
be a better forum.

- Serge