[Talk-us] Odd road / odd structure

Wed May 25 13:55:14 UTC 2016

I appreciate the many thoughtful replies here, thank you.

For the street that’s not a street, somebody else had added it as a footway, which feels like exactly the right thing anyway. 

But, to the Civil Engineer :)

*  Ugh...this actually pains me as a civil engineer.  Not for the traffic calming effort but the fact that they very evidently designed this whole thing with AutoCAD blocks without any thought whatsoever, to the point of running the concrete gutter through the green space without so much as considering a bollard and french drain instead, amongst many possible alternatives

The Irvine GIS guy told me that Paisley Place also servers as a utility easement, which may have impacted some of the design.  These are quite pretty little walkways, with a nice gate to enter, it’s just odd that it’s a street.

But regarding the big water catchment surface:

*  Depending on the cant and the surface, it could actually be some sort of French drain or infiltration pad designed as potentially an emergency helipad.  I, personally, would make no assumption as to what it was without at least cursory knowledge of the region's drainage and/or rescue tropes …

I have some of that cursory knowledge, plus I actually hiked up there and checked it out myself – there’s no question that it’s there to collect water, drain it into the two cisterns to the southeast, and there’s a water tap a little farther to the southwest.

What you can’t see from the satellite imagery is that it’s at the top of a hill, the only water it can possibly collect is rainwater.  It’s also clear that this isn’t being used any more, but back in the forties I’m certain it was a great place to water your horse.

I think it would serve as a fine helipad, though these were constructed before helicopters were in widespread enough use to be considered for that.  I’m going to ask the local fire agency if they have records of using that spot for helo.

Thanks for the really useful input.

Steve

From: Paul Johnson [mailto:baloo at ursamundi.org] 
Sent: Tuesday, May 24, 2016 2:19 PM
To: Steve Friedl <steve at unixwiz.net>
Cc: OpenStreetMap talk-us list <talk-us at openstreetmap.org>
Subject: Re: [Talk-us] Odd road / odd structure

On Mon, May 23, 2016 at 11:41 AM, Steve Friedl <steve at unixwiz.net <mailto:steve at unixwiz.net> > wrote:

Hi all,

I have two things that I just don’t quite know how to map.  Sorry that I have to provide Google Maps views to demonstrate.

1)      How does one represent a named street which is really a greenbelt: never been drivable, was assigned a name just to allow attaching a street name to the houses on either side.

Example: In Irvine California there’s a residential area shown here:

https://www.google.com/maps/@33.7298257,-117.7572128,19z

I’m referring to Paisley Place, which is shown as a named alley connecting Garden Gate Lane and Winslow Lane.

After surveying the area and seeing that the City of Irvine GIS showed Paisley as that greenbelt, I reported it as an error (as I’ve done dozens of times for other things), but the very helpful GIS manager reported that this is correct (but certainly odd), and the two street-like things on either side of it are just unnamed alleys.

How do I represent this in OSM?  It’s not a street that doesn’t allow access, it’s not really even a street!

I wouldn't really call that a greenbelt.  In the American context, this is an edge case, big time.  I would lean towards livable_street, since there's no separate sidewalk, no reasonable expectation you're going to go more than cycleway speed, and the main entries to buildings are on it.  Given my experience with most developments, if they literally had another street with the front doors, this would be highway=service, service=alley instead of being a worst-of-both-worlds example of trying to make a pedestrian and bicycle friendly space in a car-centric area by force...I don't even know what to call the planter midway down anything but stupid, though I would probably go barrier=block, vehicle=no, though it seems we have evidence that the Google Car has just squeezed between the trees (and there's obvious evidence that literally anyone that isn't a full-track vehicle and some that are go through there anyway).  And I don't think there's anything legally stopping you from stepping over the planter on foot.

Ugh...this actually pains me as a civil engineer.  Not for the traffic calming effort but the fact that they very evidently designed this whole thing with AutoCAD blocks without any thought whatsoever, to the point of running the concrete gutter through the green space without so much as considering a bollard and french drain instead, amongst many possible alternatives..

In the Santa Ana Mountains in Southern California, the satellite views show something that looks exactly like a helipad:

https://www.google.com/maps/@33.7875181,-117.5805174,419m/data=!3m1!1e3

But it’s not. That whole huge surface – paved in asphalt – is tilted slightly so that rainwater water will collect and fill the two cisterns to the left (zooming in you can barely see the pipe from the big pad to the cisterns.

I cannot find anything that’s even close to describing what this is, but it’s so prominent on the maps (and interesting to visit) that I seems like it should be there even if to make note that it’s not a helipad.

Depending on the cant and the surface, it could actually be some sort of French drain or infiltration pad designed as potentially an emergency helipad.  I, personally, would make no assumption as to what it was without at least cursory knowledge of the region's drainage and/or rescue tropes, since along those lines here, retention ponds and rooftop drainage cisterns are far more common (as areas where there's been a petrolium well blowout has probably rendered much of the groundwater and surface runoff unsafe, making raingutter cisterns the norm for household tapwater in those cases, often with an aerial visible collection and filtration system apparent, with any nearby surface ponds that might have been used for irrigation or drinking water prior to the well blowout instead used for wastewater collection). 

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