[OSM-talk-ie] mapping roads

[Ken Guest]

On Fri, Mar 14, 2014 at 6:27 PM, da fo43 <dafo43 at outlook.com> wrote:

> Hello All, First
>  time posting on the mailing list but I've spoken individually to a
> number of you already. There can't be too many roads still to map in
> Ireland now so I guess the next step would be to improve the quality by
> filling in road numbers, names, etc. So I'm going to propose a few
> standards and see what people think. 1.       Map L roads 1000 to 4999
> (Local Primary) as 'Tertiary' and all other public roads as 'Unclassified'
> or 'Residential'.
>

Changing the tagging of roads based on an arbitrary reason such as an
assigned L ref value where we presume there is a consistent scheme applied
to it is mindless. Not all [county] councils assigned values based on the
quality of the road, I know of at least one where the assigned value is
based on the electoral division that the road is in.

Changing the tagging of anything based on the self-perceived notion that
you know better where in actual fact you might not, is little more than
mindless vandalism. Good intentions or not. This is why I hope you are
looking for advice first, here and now, before you change anything based on
your gut feel.


>  I know people have a lot of differing views on this and will admit that
>  some local primary roads seem to have less importance than Local
> Secondary and Local Tertiary roads but really I think it's better to go
> with what is designated rather than making judgement calls. On some
> parts of the map all roads are being set to 'Tertiary' so really I don't
>  think the current system works. All other roads are mapped as per
> designation so I personally don't see why this should be any different.
>


Tag a road as how it is - if a road is primarily residential then tag it as
residential. If a road, no matter what the classification is according to
how you interpret an L-ref number, is only good enough for being
"unclassified" rather than, say tertiary, then tag it as that. If some
remnant of the old N7 is now little more than a cul-de-sac with a few
houses on it, tag it as such, not highway=primary :-)

Take a look at http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Highway to see what I
mean, and remember:

      If it looks like a duck, quacks like a duck and smell's like a duck
then it's a duck.



>  2.       Labeling roads L1000-9999 with spaces.
>  I see on some parts of the map that roads are being labelled with a
> space 'L 1234' instead of 'L1234'. I would be in favour of sticking to
> one standard, and going with the majority in not using a space.
>

Not having spaces is good, but please don't readjust the formatting
otherwise! Read on...


>  3.       Labeling roads over L9999.
>  I propose the labeling roads listed as L12341 as L1234-1 as
> this makes it easier to read and work out which branch of
> primary/secondary road it belongs to. I guess this might not suit
> everyone.
>
>
"Ground Truth" requires that you map it as you see it, not as how you wish
you saw it.
Please don't remove hyphens from where you think they don't belong and add
them to where you want them. There are enough standards without making up
more - or I suppose you could say people get confused easily enough without
adding reformatting into the mix.



> 4.       Non public roads to be displayed as 'Service' or 'Track' only.
>  It's not always obvious if some roads are private (especially some
> housing estates) but where it is known for certain they are private then
>  I would be in favour of using a 'service' road rather than
> 'residential' or 'unclassified'.
>


If the main use of a road is residential (e.g. down a cul-de-sac or in a
housing estate), then tag it as residential. Tracks are roads for
agricultural or forestry use. Private residential roads should be tagged
highway=residential;access=private not as highway=service which means
something completely different (and used to tag things such as alleys,
parking aisles and the likes).

Remember my "duck" sentence? :-)


Ken



-- 
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