[Talk-us] US highway tagging and relations

[Paul Johnson]

On Sun, 07 Feb 2010 13:35:33 -0800, Jeff Barlow wrote:

> After reading several differing Wiki pages about the highway tag I
> concluded that highway = primary made the most sense for the local parts
> of these two roads. Now I see that someone with the user name
> "dysteleologist" has changed much of US 20 NW of Bend to highway =
> trunk. This seems inappropriate to me for a two lane country road with
> stop signs.

You got it right, trunks would be expressways (such as Bend Parkway in 
your area).

> I have no idea who this person is or how to contact them. I can easily
> see how someone not familiar with central Oregon could be confused about
> the nature of these roads and/or highway tagging rules in general.
> Perhaps it is I who is confused about the latter. <shrug>
> 
> So, how should I proceed?

You can contact the person through the website (change your name in the 
URL when you look at your profile with the person you're trying to 
contact).  I'd also tag it again as primary.

> Secondly, I find the JOSM relation editing functionality pretty opaque
> and undocumented. The JOSM help buttons seem to be totally
> nonfunctional. I have mostly guessed how to use it. I have no clue what
> the little symbols in the right column of the member list mean, nor what
> the order of those members is supposed to represent, if anything.
> 
> Is there some documentation for this stuff somewhere?

JOSM is mostly self-documenting; in recent tested versions, mousing over 
the symbols gives an explanation of what the button does.  Take a look at 
existing route relations for examples.