[talk-au] dirt roads

[dbannon at internode.on.net]

OK, I'm interested in what you say about lanes= John (and the rest
too!)

I  use lanes=1 to indicate that a road is generally only wide enough
for one car, if one approaches traveling in the other direction, both
need to slow a little and pull of to the side. Similarly for
overtaking. Thats actually a pretty important factoid, lots of
caravaners for example would studiously avoid such a road.

I agree lanes=2 is almost certainly unnecessary. Think the wiki
already says so.

So, I suggest, your comment does raise the question of just how narrow
a road needs to be before it gets called lanes=1  ?  Most drivers on
a dirt road with good visibility tend to sit close to the middle and
drift off to the left when some one approaches. Thats one end of the
scale. At the other, you are continuously (and nervously) looking for
somewhere to pull in case there is oncoming traffic. (anyone been down
Bull Track in the high country ?)  I tend to think that somewhere in
the middle (so to speak) is right, if you expect to need to slow down
substantially to allow another car to pass, that is lanes=1.

Sadly there is quite a lot of roads that fit that description.

Agree with your other comments, especially about the Hume !

David

----- Original Message -----
From: "John Henderson" 
To:
Cc:
Sent:Sun, 21 Oct 2012 13:11:07 +1100
Subject:Re: [talk-au] dirt roads

 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

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