[Talk-GB] Kent County Council Highways Gazetteer

[Colin Smale]

I applied to KCC for permission to use data from their Highways 
Gazetteer in OSM. They have approved on the condition that the data is 
attributed to them. My request and their official reply are below. What 
this gives us is an authorititave source for road numbering and 
classification in Kent (excluding Medway), although it does require a 
little bit of thinking as there are no coordinates, only road and place 
names. So for example we take Whitehill Road and Highcross Road between 
Longfield and Bean [1] the Gazetteer makes clear that these roads are 
still officially the B255, even though the signs have not revealed this 
for years. For the attribution they require I intend to use 
source:ref=kent.gov.uk.

Which brings me to a dilemma: If a road is ostensibly one type but 
officially another, how should this be tagged? Both are "verifiable." 
Traditionally the official classification takes precedence - otherwise 
the single-track A-roads in the Scottish highlands and islands might 
better be tagged as as "track" in some cases... The Wiki [2] 
specifically refers to the Administrative classifications.

Another use of this Gazetteer is to arbitrate between road classes, 
particularly between tertiary (i.e. C-roads) and unclassified, where 
there is mostly no visible difference "on the ground". That throws up 
the odd anomaly as well: New Ash Green [3] got its very own bypass in 
the seventies, which is single carriageway but very wide. The much 
smaller original "main road" which goes through the village still 
retains the "C" classification, and the relatively enormous bypass is 
still "unclassified".

It occurred to the cynic in me that the lengths of roads of various 
classes might be fed into some spreadsheet in Whitehall to calculate 
some kind of grant to the local councils, giving them an interest in 
keeping the administrative classifications as "high" as possible, 
despite downgrading them on the ground. But that's unlikely to be true 
of course.

Colin Smale

[1] 
http://www.openstreetmap.org/?lat=51.40868&lon=0.2965&zoom=15&layers=B000FTF 
<http://www.openstreetmap.org/?lat=51.40868&lon=0.2965&zoom=15&layers=B000FTF>
[2] http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Map_Features#Highway
[3] 
http://www.openstreetmap.org/?lat=51.3665&lon=0.30171&zoom=15&layers=B000FTF 
<http://www.openstreetmap.org/?lat=51.3665&lon=0.30171&zoom=15&layers=B000FTF>
=========================

Dear Sirs,

I am one of an army of volunteers who collectively are producing and 
maintaining "openstreetmap.org" ( _http://www.openstreetmap.org/_ ), a 
crowd-sourced map of the world under the CC-BY-SA (Creative Commons by

Share-Alike) licence ( _http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0/_ 
), with which you may be familiar.

Having found the KCC Highways Gazetteer, I would like to request your 
permission to use and republish certain information contained in this 
document by incorporating it in OpenStreetMap.

One of the problems we frequently face is that the official category of 
a road (or segment thereof) is not always immediately obvious "on the 
ground". I would like to use this document to classify (minor) roads 
correctly as (for example distinguishing between "unclassified" and 
"tertiary"), add the official road number, and possibly its status as a 
private (unadopted) street. The Highways Gazetteer contains no location 
information (other than place names) and therefore is probably 
unencumbered by Ordnance Survey restrictions, which would render the 
data unusable in the CC-BY-SA licence model. The alignment of the road 
will still be surveyed "on the ground", but thereafter the Gazetteer 
will be used to classify the road correctly as mentioned.

Yours sincerely,
Colin Smale

=========================

Dear Mr Smale,
Further to your request for information relating to re-use of 
information from the Kent Highways Gazetteer, because the information 
you have requested falls under the scope of the Freedom of Information 
Act (FoIA) and is information held within the Environment, Highways & 
Waste Directorate (the directorate), your request has been forwarded to 
me so that I can co-ordinate the response on behalf of the directorate. 
This is to comply with procedures that the County Council has for 
dealing with all FoIA requests.

You ask the Council:

    * Having found the KCC Highways Gazetteer, I would like to request
      your permission to use and republish certain information contained
      in this document by incorporating it in OpenStreetMap

Although the response below has been sent from me, I have liaised with 
Kent Highway Services who have provided the following in answer to your 
request:

Kent County Council are willing to allow the information in the Highway 
Gazetteer to be used for the purpose of Open Street Map on the proviso 
that we receive confirmation that the data source is kent.gov.uk.

=========================

On 03/01/2010 12:36, Colin Smale wrote:
> While searching the internet for arbitration in a case where "local
> wisdom" appeared to conflict with OSM data I came across the Kent County
> Council Highways Gazetteer. It contains a "complete" list of roads in
> Kent, including their reference, road number, name, official
> classification, parish and length.
>
> It's a PDF file, linked from here:
> http://www.kent.gov.uk/roads_and_transport/transport_policies/road_status/adopted_and_private_streets.aspx
>
> I would like to use this document to classify minor roads correctly as
> "unclassified" or "tertiary", add the official road number, at least to
> the "tertiary" roads, i.e. C-roads, and possibly "access=permissive"
> where the road is a privately maintained road (assuming unhindered
> access etc. as described on the Wiki).
>
> There is no sign of any OS-encumbrances; there is no real location
> information in the file. The KCC (together with district councils I
> assume) can be considered a fairly authoritative source for this
> information.
>
> Would it be OK to derive tagging in this way? Should we get explicit
> permission from KCC first? Anyone got any experience with this, or
> example emails for this kind of request?
>
> Colin
>
> _______________________________________________
> Talk-GB mailing list
> Talk-GB at openstreetmap.org
> http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-gb
>    

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