[Talk-ca] Data Source for Surrey Roads

[Paul Norman]

I just finished converting the Surrey road data to a .osm file. This may be
of interest to anyone mapping in the Surrey area.

I've posted it to http://maps.paulnorman.ca/surrey/SurreyRoads2010.zip along
with the ogr2osm translation file I wrote.

I'm not planning to import it wholesale, just selectively if I have to
update a road, and I plan to move some tags over on major roads (maxspeed,
lanes, hgv=*, hazmat=*)

Some notes on the strengths and weakness of the data

Weaknesses:
- Ways are not dualized. This road data was intended for their printed maps
which do not have dualized roads. Incidentally, I purchased one of those
maps.

- Some roads are off in position. Most are extremely good with <40cm error,
but some have jogs that are out of place by a few meters. 

- Odd classifications. Some roads are classified strangely. This only
impacts secondary and primary roads.

Strengths:

- It is very recent, with roads not constructed until late 2010 present in
the data

- The postions seem slightly better than GeoBase

- It has truck access and hazardous material restrictions

- It has speed and lane information


The tagging of a typical road is

highway=residential
lanes=2
maxspeed=50
name=58 Avenue
source=City of Surrey 2010 GIS Data
surface=Asphalt
surrey:geodb_oid:496

while a highway looks like

hazmat=designated
hgv=designated
highway=primary
etc.