[talk-au] dirt roads

[John Henderson]

On 21/10/12 12:03, dbannon at internode.on.net wrote:

> lanes=[1; 2]

I thing the "lanes" tag is best not used, unless there's more than two
marked lanes on a two-way road, or more than one lane on a one-way road.

This is the recommendation in the Australian tagging guidelines:
http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Australian_Roads_Tagging#Number_of_lanes

I have two reasons for arguing this.

Firstly, it's something else that would need checking when doing OSM
maintenance (and quite unnecessarily).  And it's something else to get
wrong if it's used routinely.  It's easier for everybody if its used is
reserved for the special cases.

Secondly, as an active mapper, I often download the whole of Australia
every week for use as route-proving on my Garmin GPSs.  If every road in
Australia had a lanes tag, that'd be a lot more data to download.

> Similarly, even on the east coast, its not unusual to see dirt roads
> defined as 'tertiary' or even 'secondary'.

I think a lot of roads get "pumped up" to be more important than they
are.  The great majority of country roads should be "unclassified".
It's hard to make a judgement as to when a different tag should apply.
Is it a main connecting road between towns with a Post Office?  How many
cars per hour travel it?

Another example is the tagging of the Hume Highway as a motorway.  Most
of it isn't.  The Hume Freeway in Victoria is, but most of the NSW
section has normal side-road junctions, and is certainly not a motorway.
By tagging it as a motorway, we've destroyed this useful distinction.

John