[talk-au] mapping data on the NSW north coast, and a request for road designation clarification

[Brent Easton]

Hi Eric,

Great work. I love that part of the world!

Have a look at the tagging guidelines here:

http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/index.php/Australian_Roads_Tagging

Remember, these are just guidelines, but give a general plan to follow. 

I would generally mark the major 'smaller country roads linking towns' as Secondary rather that Tertiary. Tertiary roads are through roads that aren't necessarily a direct route between two roads. They may be the flood-free back route, or the road out to popular lookout, or a scenic drive. I use secondary for all the main connecting routes between towns that are not major highways or state routes.

But there is room for discretion here since NSW does not have a very developed numbering system. For example, I would probably mark the Summerland way from Grafton to Casino as Primary.

By The Way, there is a problem with tracks you have uploaded around Mullumbimby - they have way too many points. It looks like you have loaded a GPS track into JOSM, converted it to a track and directly uploaded it. Please don't do this as it adds a huge burden to all of the editing and downstream processing tools. It makes editing with JOSM extremely difficult, and makes rendering of that area very slow.

A good compromise is to use the 'Simplify track' button in JOSM which removes unneccessary nodes in sections of the track that have no bends, but leaves them alone on the curves. For example, on the Coolamon Scenic Drive it removed 2/3's of the nodes with affecting track definition.

Regards,
Brent.

*********** REPLY SEPARATOR  ***********

On 31/01/2008 at 11:24 PM Eric Rose  wrote:

>Hi,
>
>I've been gradually creating data from the GPS traces I took over
>Christmas  
>on the NSW North Coast, and have filled in some of the region around 
>Mullumbimby 
>(http://openstreetmap.org/?lat=-28.5989&lon=153.4827&zoom=13&layers=B0FT), 
>and from Lismore down to Grafton via Casino. If someone wanted to look
>over 
>what I've done and suggest any improvements, or mis-tagging, I would 
>appreciate the feedback.
>
>Part of what I would like comment on, is the road types. From what I've
>read, 
>highways such as the Pacific and Bruxner are tagged as primary, major
>roads 
>are secondary (for instance Bangalow Road connecting Lismore and
>Bangalow). 
>Below that, smaller country roads linking towns are tertiary and the rest
>are 
>marked as unclassified, with no other designation accepted. Is that a
>correct 
>understanding of the system?
>
>The question arises because, I see that some of what I would call
>unclassified 
>have been marked as minor (cf. an example south of Eureka, on the above
>map), 
>while some of what I would call tertiary (Lawrence Road north of Grafton)
>has 
>been marked as secondary, and some that whould be unclassified as
>tertiary, 
>in the same area.
>
>Eric
>
>-- 
>There is a time when the operation of the machine becomes so odious --
>makes 
>you so sick at heart that you cannot take part. You cannot even passively 
>take part. And you?ve got to put your bodies on the gears and upon the
>wheels 
>and levers, upon all of the apparatus and you have to make it stop and you 
>have got to indicate to the people who run and own it, that unless you are 
>free, the machine will be prevented from working at all.
>	Mario Savio
>
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____________________________________________________________
Brent Easton                       
Analyst/Programmer                               
University of Western Sydney                                   
Email: b.easton at uws.edu.au