[Talk-us-massachusetts] Mass state routes & interstates using ramp tag

[Greg Troxel]

"Wayne Emerson, Jr. via Talk-us-massachusetts"
<talk-us-massachusetts at openstreetmap.org> writes:

> The wiki for this key
>
> https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Key:ramp
>
> says in the description: "Whether a ramp for bicycles, strollers,
> wheelchairs or luggage is built into a stairway" The sidebar says it
> Requires "highway=steps". By chance I discovered a section of Route 3
> with ramp=yes. (Not the on-ramp) I checked all the New England states
> with overpass-turbo and no other state uses this tag on state routes
> or interstates, whereas Massachusetts uses it on almost every major
> highway, probably thousands of times. I'm pretty sure interstates are
> quite stair free, though the potholes might count. Is the wiki
> incorrect?

In the history of OSM, Massachusetts is pretty different in a few ways.
One is that roads from MassGIS (really from the EOT, now MassDOT) were
imported before the big TIGER import for the rest of the country.  This
was back in the time when everything including imports was much less
organized and reviewed.

I am guessing that perhaps this made sense at the time and is from that
import (2008?).  I would look at some of the places that have it and
back at the history, and maybe we can figure out how it came to be, and
if we should be cleaning it up, or if it's not causing trouble and it's
low on the priority list to fix.