[Talk-us] TIGER considered harmful

[Paul Johnson]

Dave Hansen wrote:

> If we can come up with a scheme for getting the addressing imported in a
> sane fashion and the consensus is that people want it done that way,
> it'll get imported.  There are still quite a few squeaky wheels that
> like to grumble about TIGER, but I haven't heard a single person say
> that it did more harm than good.

I firmly believe this.  TIGER contains so many errors in Oregon,
Washington and Idaho that it would likely be easier to start fresh than
fix.

1) TIGER data is so out of date for urban parts of Cascadia as to be
rendered entirely useless.

2) The TIGER import violates one of the most basic principals of OSM: 
"Abbreviations:  DO NOT DO IT."

3) Gotta love how TIGER randomly decides some routes aren't freeways
when they actually are (and have been for decades).  Washington State
has literally thousands of miles of expressway and freeway TIGER got
wrong.

The TIGER import should never have been done.  I wonder how easy it
would be to undo this until an actually suitable data source can be
found, since the Fed is doing it on wet bar napkins with "cartographers"
who wear hockey helmets and ride the short bus to work.  Might as well
photograph a turd and call it aerial photography of central Idaho for
the accuracy of TIGER...heck, that photo might actually agree with the
TIGER data better!