[OSM-talk] Highway tags and other junk

[Ben Robbins]

This is a kind of a long email, but It’s better to make it clear by writing 
about the situation in its entirety rather than short incomplete points I 
figure.  So…good luck, Refreshments are available at the interval…

Section 1, Part 1, Verse 1, part a:

I’ve been thinking about how to tag all smaller roads a lot for quite some 
time, and more so since the tertiary tag 'debate'.   There is currently 1 
tag that has a defined value for roads less than secondary, and that is 
unclassified.   But I have come to conclude that there is 4.

1)  The wider roads (about 20'), usually with white lines.  When driving a 
normal viecle on the other side of the road would not effect you.  The tag 
'tertiary' should cover this, but has yet to be defined.

2)  Roads which when driving and meeting another car you would usually shift 
well to one side, and maybe slow down.  Usually have no lines. (about 17')

3) The roads that you would have to shift partly onto the grass to pass 
another car (about 12')

4) The roads which you would need to stop and one of the two meeting cars 
would need to reverse. (about 10')

Before you  say these don’t need to be labeled separately please note that 
the average speed on the 1st type would be about 55mph, while on the 4th it 
would be about 15mph.  A route planner must sort these apart.

This leads me on to the argument as to weather these road types should be 
separated by an additional tag (width for example).  Well there’s 2 reasons 
why this is a poor idea.

1)  You need to get out the car, or off your bike and measure the width of 
every road
2)  When rendering, every single variation would need to be set up, or it 
would need to work it out, which sounds overly complicated

But then again that it could be said that any road with the same political 
properties should have the same highway tag, and then an additional tag.   
But then this has been broken as the a tertiary road has the same rules as 
an unclassified road in the UK.

Therefore in conclusion I think there are 2 possible ways to go that seem 
logical.

1)  Make an additional value, which has 4 possible tags in which you enter 1 
of them.  These are predefined by how they appear in the field.
2)  Have 4 tags to go under highway.

If 1 is the way to go, then the tertiary tag shouldn’t be used in the UK, 
although Im awair that in some countries there may be a need for it.

If 2 is the way to go, then there needs to be some inventing of new names.

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The 2nd part of this long email is about tracktypes.

I have brought this up twice before on the mailing list, and a few times in 
the IRC, and then there’s a wiki page which has been updated a few times and 
images added; and there has been a vote for a long time.  Its also stuck on 
my user page just for the hell of it.  (I am appreciative of the few bits of 
discussion on the wiki page, although the conversations where short).     I 
proposed this tag after about 3 months of using it and changing it to fit.  
Now many months later and its really been tested, and works well.  The 
important thing on the wiki was to sort out the naming of the tag, but I 
have now used this tag many hundreds if not a thousand times, so it will 
take a LOT of my time to change them, when if this was resolved quickly it 
wouldn’t have taken much time at all.

I now give up, and I shall continue to use this tag regardless.  Resolving 
this democratically was a waste of time, so I shall now just stubbornly use 
it, and confront any opposition in my path!

This is a very much needed tag, as any users that don’t live in urban areas 
must shorely understand.  Even if someone only wants 1 track tag, it still 
should not be under highway= as a track is not a public right of way in any 
form (like all the other highway tags), unless an additional tag is stuck on 
it.  E.g.  a track may be a byway, and therefore the track has access rights 
of the byway.

This leads me on to saying that that is why I currently have a 
tracktype=grade1.  Its different to services because your cant go down it 
unless a highway tag is also on it.   I have attached an additional image of 
a tracktype=grade1 here:- >> 
http://i57.photobucket.com/albums/g226/ben_robbins_/IMG_3082.jpg <<

There are other tags proposed that also have had no response.  Borders and 
features are 2.  I am conservatively using the features tag so that I am not 
forced to undo everything, but I’m using the borders tag a lot as I’m 
beginning to give up being democratic with that also.

Thanks for reading it all if you have...

Ben

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