[Tagging] Access restrictions and expressway=yes

[Bert -Araali- Van Opstal]

Thank you for clarifying the "development" context Fernando.

I live in East-Africa and as you might now we use the adopted highway
classifications as described
on https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Highway_Tag_Africa#Typology_of_Road_Network_in_African_countries
and https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/East_Africa_Tagging_Guidelines .
These work well for us for the majority of the countries, and are like
stevea said, a bend (but not break) our wiki definitions.

In the recent years, some large infrastructure projects led to the
construction of express-ways.  We call them express-ways because it
refers specifically to the name given to these roads by the governing
authorities.  Like with all things in Africa, the access restrictions
are rather "grey" or not strictly followed.  If you look at the physical
road construction, they are absolutely not safe to be used by the local
boda boda bikes (less powerful motorcycles used as taxis) and
pedestrians.  However, this is not clearly signposted on the links. 
Neither could we find any (yet) update in related legislation.  To make
things even worse, the roads are referenced by local markers as "M"
roads, indicating to their classification as a motorway, where since
long time legislation and clear restrictions are gazetted and
signposted. We mapped them by considering sections which have junctions
or buildings accessible from the highway with or without traffic lights
as being to be tagged as expressway= yes. Most of the buildings along
these express ways are accessed by service roads (driveways) from the
expressway and due to the absence of any clear link roads, using the
shoulders as safe lanes for slowing traffic.
Other sections, can be distinguished by having a toll gate at the
beginning and the end, where the access restrictions for these roads are
clearly signposted and can be easily enforced.  This situation of course
might change in the future as we might get motorways without toll.

We have done some attempts to align the national highway reference
coding (A which includes motorways, trunk and primary roads, B as
secondary roads, C as tertiary according to majorly their socio-economic
significance), district roads which contain major urban roads or feeder
roads (U) are mostly defined as tertiary roads. Local roads are either
residential or when they have a feeder function or interconnection
function we tag them as unclassified.  The national coding systems exist
since the colonial times, which in my case were British, so it might
explain why for us the general OSM system fits.  Not so the case
(any-more) for motorways and express ways when we look at the recent
developments.
However, as described before we can handle the express ways and
distinguish them as either motorways, primary roads or trunk roads using
the existing system.  Confirming stevea and Minh as the currently
existing expressway=yes as sufficient.  No need to create another
highway=* class based on access restrictions.

Greetings,

Bert Araali

On 22/02/2021 17:21, Fernando Trebien wrote:
> On Mon, Feb 22, 2021 at 10:50 AM Bert -Araali- Van Opstal
> <bert.araali.afritastic at gmail.com> wrote:
>> Be careful when you use the term "developed". Local communities become offended.
> "Developed" should only be understood as "reached its full economic
> potential", and developing, "getting there". There's no intention of
> offending anyone. The OSM wiki uses the expression "built area", which
> is essentially the same idea, so "developed" would mean "fully built"
> while "developing" would mean "being built".
>
>> Developed in which sense, as creating paved highways, as being able to incorporate natural materials and tracks in a natural environment, I wouldn't call them developing in general.
>> They are much more developed in the sense of experience and integration of highways in a luckily still mostly pristine natural environment. I can't say that of most of the regions in the western world.
> So, my point is that using only the physical characteristics for
> highway classification in OSM ends up indirectly encoding into the
> road network the regional and local wealth gaps, not reflecting their
> socioeconomic importance, [1] which is the concept adopted by HOT. [2]
>
>> Better use terms like in tropical countries, southern hemisphere etc.., these countries are much more developed in many senses.
> I come from a developing tropical country in the southern hemisphere
> and I partially agree. Each country and each system has its pros and
> cons.
>
>> (This is a kind remark as a counterbalance to the western domination :) ). Maybe the HFCS should be regarded as not a favourable development, an example of a "developing" nation when it comes to climate change and respect for the environment.
> Here in Brazil, the commercial cartographic tradition is to classify
> ways according to their importance for mobility in specific contexts.
> In remote areas, most streets in the city are unpaved, but even some
> unpaved streets are the "main" streets. If the classification does not
> reflect this, OSM becomes useless as a guide for moving around. The
> same is often true on larger regional scales. So, HFCS's ideas about
> "function" could be applied, but certainly not the associated physical
> profiles.
>
> [1] https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Proposed_features/Highway_key_voting_importance
> [2] https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Highway_Tag_Africa#Values_based_on_economic_and_social_dimension_of_the_road
>
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