[Talk-us] SPAM-LOW: Re: Rural US: Correcting Original TIGER Imported Ways

[Kevin Broderick]

On Mon, Feb 12, 2018 at 6:23 PM, Brian May <bmay at mapwise.com> wrote:

> ...
>


> Many times, a residential street having no name is a strong tip as well
> that it is not a residential street.
>
> Kevin, I hear where you are coming from, but I think your case is somewhat
> unique. Most people aren't going to look at a GPS with OSM data in it, see
> a bunch of residential roads in a rural un-populated area and think, OK,
> that must be unedited TIGER, but I know there's a few navigable roads in
> there somewhere, I just need to find them, record what I found and make
> some OSM edits. If they know the area, they are going to think this data is
> junk. If they don't know the area and they head into it they will then
> figure out pretty quickly the data is junk. I agree with others that these
> roads should probably not be in OSM at all - let the locals add the real
> roads and tracks. But we are living with the old TIGER, and there is some
> potential usefulness that can come from it. So as others have said, we are
> willing to leave them there, downgrade them to track without a grade
> assigned for now, maybe make some spatial corrections, delete roads that
> are obviously pure fantasy, etc.
>
> I don't think there should be any requirement to cover a certain size area
> when reviewing these areas. We need to be thankful that someone has taken
> the time to look at even a small area of rural areas that don't get much
> attention normally at all, especially private lands.
>

Perhaps I'm even weirder than I realized ;).

I know that I'm not the *only* one, and yes, it's more of a recognizing
bunk data then actually saying, "oh, that's got to be uncorrected TIGER"; I
could recognize areas of questionable data on my Garmin well before I got
involved in OSM and even knew what TIGER was, and as you noted, "Turn left
on Unnamed Road" was one of the warning signs that the route was likely to
be interesting (others being minor roads that allegedly go arrow-straight
in Vermont for more than half a mile, roads in minimally populated areas
that show as higher-grade than the main road connecting two hamlets, etc.).

>From what I've seen in both Montana and Vermont, the uncorrected TIGER data
generally bears a strong resemblance to *something* on the ground; it does
often include long driveways, some private roads, and occasionally paper
roads, but in the areas I'm familiar with, a TIGER road usually does have
some on-the-ground counterpart, even if many of them are not
sedan-friendly. For a lot of reasons, Vermont has very little questionable
TIGER left, Montana has a lot more, and I do agree that anyone who can pick
away at it is a good thing. I'd still suggest that, whenever possible,
modifying a localized road network in one swoop (and thus removing some of
the clues that weirdos like me would see as evidence of a good place to
explore and a bad shortcut if pressed for time) is helpful and probably
less likely to confuse routing engines.

-- 
Kevin Broderick
ktb at kevinbroderick.com
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