[talk-au] What gives with roundabouts?

Darrin Smith beldin at beldin.org
Thu Dec 11 01:03:01 GMT 2008


On Thu, 11 Dec 2008 09:56:46 +1100
Ian Sergeant <isergean at hih.com.au> wrote:

> Hi Darrin,
> 
> Over the past few years, there is no doubt in my mind that the
> consensus on the Australian mailing list, and in practice in
> Australia, has been to use mini-roundabouts to indicate the concrete
> structure within the width of the road. You can (of course)
> reasonably disagree with this, but people mapping this way are doing
> it because they think that it is the best respresentation - and not
> because of any form of "laziness".

I've looked back through the logs, found the one discussion, noted that
it was basically a 4-3 split of contributors and since every discussion
on it has been "we discussed it and decided this". Hardly a consensus
in my mind. 

From Brent's original post on the issue:
(From
http://lists.openstreetmap.org/pipermail/talk-au/2007-September/000144.html)

> I find that creating junction=roundabout for most roundabouts to be
> difficult, time-consuming and pretty much completely pointless. The
> mini-roundabouts are rendered nicely. I think the junction=roundabout
> is really intended for those huge UK style roundabouts that are 100
> metres accross.

Um "Difficult time-consuming and pretty much completely pointless"
reeks of laziness to me, especially when 2 other mappers were
suggesting they didn't think it was pointless.

Given not every tag proposed for another country will map to something
here, why do we suddenly need to stretch this definition to cover cases
here? The junction=roundabout works perfectly for most roundabouts
here, even the smallest in-road one requires some deviation (An in-road
one with lots of GPX tracks around it always shows a bulge with a hole
in the middle) so a small circle of 4 ways fits with what's on the
ground, shooting down the completely pointless and "it's not
mapping what's on the ground" arguments. Yet the only other reason
people have to not do it is because it's "Time consuming" and
"difficult". Please don't tell me it's not about laziness, it's ALL
about laziness.

> You wrote:
> 
> > No, but I'm sure there's NO roundabouts in the rest of the world
> > like a mini-roundabout by the 'Australian' definition, rather a
> > myopic view (In reality I suspect they are in fact the most common
> > type of all, since they're cheap).
> 
> No, I don't think so.  Australian style roundabouts aren't at all
> common in the UK or the USA.

Every roundabout I've so far seen in the US fits the definition of
mini-roundabout as used here (several dozen mostly in suburban
Chicago). I just did a random satalite map look into London and every
one of the dozen roundabouts I could find fits into the 'Aussie'
definition.

> In the UK just about all the roundabouts are larger, causing you to
> turn into the roundabout.  Its a separate road construction, and not
> a bit of concrete in the middle of the road.

I'd argue that the very ones on the border here between mini and real
this would apply to in all but 2 wheel vehicles anyway. And there are
numerous 2-lane intersections in Adelaide which would fall back to
being minis if I were to follow this. In fact the notorious Brittania
Roundabout would happily qualify as a mini roundabout since the
Central Island fits totally inside all original road segments, which is
of course ludicrous.
(http://www.informationfreeway.org/?lat=-34.92792673711242&lon=138.6227993354836&zoom=17&layers=B0000F000F)

There's even a 2-lane roundabout near here with centre islands on the
approaches going back 30m or more more, yet the roundabout itself fits
inside the original road with, so qualifies a mini roundabout? 

> Note that the renderer developers, in reality, hold more sway than any
> amount of map features votes.

I have noticed that :) 


-- 

=b




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