[Talk-GB] Shoulders

[Philip Barnes]

On Fri, 2022-04-15 at 10:39 +0100, Mark Goodge wrote:
> 
> 
> On 15/04/2022 08:16, Philip Barnes wrote:
> > On Wed, 2022-04-13 at 19:37 +0100, Tom Crocker wrote:
> > > It asks:
> > > Does this road have a shoulder?
> > > A shoulder is a clearly demarcated emergency stopping lane that
> > > allows vehicles to stop safely completely beside the traffic
> > > lane,
> > > although not always (fully) on paved surface.
> > 
> > In UK terms I would disagree with the final part, about not always
> > a
> > paved surface.
> > 
> > An important part of the function of a hard shoulder is that
> > vehicles
> > can slow dow outside the running lanes and when leaving can
> > accellerate
> > to a safe speed to safely rejoin the live lanes. Here you will be
> > joining the live lanes at little over walking pace.
> 
> Surely that's the point, though? There's a difference between a
> shoulder 
> and a hard shoulder. Or, to be more precise, a hard shoulder is a
> subset 
> of shoulder. So the question is, are we mapping all shoulders, or
> only 
> hard shoulders?
> 
> Having said that, I don't think the example you gave in your original
> post is a shoulder, hard or otherwise. A shoulder isn't just a
> slightly 
> wider carriageway than is necessary for the marked lanes. A verge
> isn't 
> a shoulder, particularly when, as in this case, it's interrupted by 
> marker posts and separated from the carriageway by drainage gravel.
> 
> https://goo.gl/maps/s9grKsPQm8rRPWiy7
> 
> In the UK, though, we generally don't have non-hard shoulders. So,
> for 
> the most part, I think it's fair to say that they should only be
> mapped 
> in the UK when fully paved, unless it's obvious that an unpaved 
> off-carriageway lane is intended for use as a shoulder.
> 
That road obviously have laybys with emergency phones, which are the
intended emergency infrastructure.

I am a bit concerned by these edits, not just a question of are these
shoulders, but that the mapper has also added foot=yes. Not wrong, but
zero reason to walk here.

Whilst necessary on rural trunk roads where you need to walk between
rights of way, houses, quiet roads and the pub adding it here to my
mind is it is better left street incomplete.

Again the shoulder tag could encourage cycle routers, when there is the
perfectly good parallel B5061, or to give it its Sunday name, the old
A5.

Phil (trigpoint)