[Talk-us] Best practices for dealing with old TIGER tags?

[Greg Troxel]

Kevin Kenny <kevin.b.kenny+osm at gmail.com> writes:

> OK, 'residential' if it looks like 'subdivision', 'unclassified'
> otherwise (as long as it's drivable in, say, my daughter's car rather
> than my 4-wheeler). Got it.

I also see a distinction between residential/unclassified as denoting a
legal road (around me, carved-out parcel wise from the surrounding land)
vs track and some service denoting a non-legal-road.  However, others
see the physical and legal attributes as separate.

If you do change a legal road to track because of poor condition, please
add access=yes if that is how it is.  highway=residential has a pretty
safe access=yes default, and I find that most highway=track are not
actually access=yes, even though most do not have tags.  This is further
messy on rendering, as it might be that tracks should be rendered with
an access color if they are access=yes, and not colored if they are
access=private.

> I suspect that 'residential'/'unclassified' right now is almost a
> difference without a distinction.

In the US, that's true.  Driving in Scotland recently gave me more
insight into the UK origins of the classification.

> I suppose that 'residential' might be a weak indication to a router to
> avoid the route, but the consequences of getting it wrong don't appear
> to be terribly severe.  Which is a relief.

I would say that a router avoiding residential is incorrect, unless it's
a tiny bit of avoidance.   It should really be about speeds, width,
lights, etc.

As for where Richard Welty draws the line, if there are a lot of houses
on 4 acre lots, I don't think that's iffy.  The questions to me is not
subdivision but

  whether most of the landuse along the road is residential or not

and the much harder

  whether much of the traffic is to/from residential vs other, which is
  even harder for collector roads to neighborhoods and what you call
  through

in the end I tink where this line is drawn is very far down on the OSM
problem list.
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: signature.asc
Type: application/pgp-signature
Size: 180 bytes
Desc: not available
URL: <http://lists.openstreetmap.org/pipermail/talk-us/attachments/20160604/ce699984/attachment.sig>