[OSM-talk] A new highway tagging scheme - thinking about tagging highways for cycling and walking as well

Martijn van Oosterhout kleptog at gmail.com
Mon Aug 27 10:00:59 BST 2007


On 8/27/07, Peter Miller <peter.miller at itoworld.com> wrote:
> I suspect that we are going to tease out national differences in road
> classification and that our model should be able to accommodate this
> differences. We also need to agree a way of classifying Ways for different
> sorts of users.

I disagree. There are too many countries to produce a model that
covers them all. I think the model should be very abstract, being
nothing more that motorway > trunk > primary etc, and within a country
the mapping is better defined. Anything else is going to get stuck is
useless detail.

Just like people are looking into rendering maps differently depending
on the country, so does the exact meaning of "motorway" differ between
countries. Let each country work it out itself.

> Note however that as a cyclist or as a walker the classification is
> completely different. How about keeping the 'highway' tag for classification
> of drivable routes for motor vehicles, and invent something else for
> cyclists and other groups of road users?

We have cycleway already...

> For cyclists a national cycle route would probably be given the highest
> cycle classification, a regional cycle route the next one, and a local cycle
> route the 3rd level. Other Ways recommended for cycling could also be tagged
> with a cycle-classification and Ways can also be tagged with 'no' if they
> should not be used.

Now you're back to looking at the "administrative classification"
which we're trying to avoid. I can't speak for the UK, but the cycle
routes in NL are not always on actual cyclepaths. Sometimes they are
roads, sometimes footpaths  though mostly cyclepaths. Whether it's
part of a cycle-route has *nothing* to do with the quality of the
track.

Have a nice day,
-- 
Martijn van Oosterhout <kleptog at gmail.com> http://svana.org/kleptog/




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