[Talk-us] proposed first principles for United States road tagging

[Anthony]

On Sun, Mar 7, 2010 at 4:01 PM, Paul Johnson <baloo at ursamundi.org> wrote:

> Anthony wrote:
>
>
> > I'm not sure what you mean by "work differently".  The laws of different
> > states are different, so the information which needs to be presented by
> the
> > map is different.  The maps, therefore, are going to be different.  I
> > wouldn't "expect the same map to work differently" in different places,
> > because I wouldn't "expect the same map" in different places.
>
> So you're suggesting a 300+ way fork of OSM?
>

Hmm, not that I know of.  But maybe you're right.  What would you consider a
300+ way fork (that you believe I was suggesting)?  I certainly don't
suggest having different databases.

The important, worldwide criteria that I'd expect is this:
*Motorways are exclusive to motor vehicle traffic.
*trunks are the most important roads in a geographic area which aren't
motorways.
*primary, secondary, and tertiary roads are, in that order, less important
than trunk roads
*residential roads are generally used primarily for non-through-traffic
*a road which connects between a primary and a tertiary or residential road,
which is not itself a residential road, is probably a secondary road

However, this is pretty much all subjective.  So I think we need to adopt
objective standards, on a state by state basis.  Alternatively, we should
just call everything that isn't a motorway a road, tag it with the
appropriate features, and use some automated process to figure out the
expected relative volume of traffic on a road in order to color it
appropriately.
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