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

[Jeffrey Martin]

On 8/27/07, Peter Miller <peter.miller at itoworld.com> wrote:
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> 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.
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> There seems to be agreement that the 'highway' tag should really be an
> indication of it's drivability, ie how useful it is for the driver of a
> vehicle, rather than its classification (A road, B road etc). btw, I have
> noticed that Google Maps don't rigidly stick to 'Red for A road' , 'brown
> for B road' etc, it seems to be much more about relative levels of use. For
> example, in the example linked to below there are two B roads coming off the
> A1152 as it heads east out of Woodbridge, the first, the B1083 heads south
> before the golf course, and the second, the B1084 (Orford Road) heads East
> after the golf course. One is rendered by Google as a very minor road, the
> other as a 'tertiary' road and it is certainly true that Orford Road is the
> busier road. Also, follow the A1152 further east and notice that it turns
> into the B1069 the other side of Rendlesham (according to my mapping) but
> Google keep it red and fail to show the new road class and code.
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> http://geo.topf.org/comparison/index.html?mt0=googlemap&mt1=tah&lon=1.3540649&lat=52.0977006&z=14
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> In the past I tagged roads strictly according to their classification
> (trunk, A, B, etc), but I now tag them so that the drivability of the place
> is revealed. Personally I agree that administration should be a completely
> different tag.
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> 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?
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> 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.
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> To keep it open for later development, would something along these lines be
> useful?
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> class_cycle=[1-9]; where 1 =highest (national cycle route), 2 next (regional
> cycle route, 3 (local cycle route), 5=mountain bike only, 9 = non-cycle-able
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> class_walk=[1-9]; where 1=national walking route (Pennine Way etc), 2
> regional walking route , 9=non-walkable
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> class_ride[1-9]; where 1=idea soft wide legal surface for galloping and so
> on.
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> I guess the current highway tags could alias onto the class_drive tag and
> the highway tag 'residential' would alias onto
> class_drive=unclassified;abutters=residential. So we would
> also have
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> Class_drive[1-9]; where highway='motorway' == 1, 'trunk' == 2 etc
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> The class-drive tag would no longer be used for ways that are not accessible
> at all by motorised traffic, the tag would be 'class_drive=no' and the
> Highway tags 'footway', 'cycleway' and 'bridleway' would be aliased onto the
> appropriate class_cycle/ class_walk/ class_ride. Are these actually
> extensions of the foot, horse, bicycle tags?
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> This change has a number of benefits:
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> It is extensible to new modes
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> It is easy to render for any mode
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> It teases out issues to do with surface and abutters from the highway tag
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> It also allows different classifications to be used for the same Way for
> different user groups
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> It is orthogonal and does not have the traditional bias towards the car, the
> car is just one of a number of different modes
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> All this is very relevant to the new cycle mapping from gravitystorm, a fine
> OSM project that is tackling the issue of rendering cycle mapping as we
> speak.
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> http://www.gravitystorm.co.uk/osm/
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> Regards,
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> PeterIto
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> > Message: 6
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> > Date: Mon, 27 Aug 2007 04:00:20 +0200
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> > From: Frederik Ramm <frederik at remote.org>
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> > Subject: Re: [OSM-talk] A new highway tagging scheme
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> > To: talk at openstreetmap.org
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> > Message-ID:
> <20070827020019.GA28425 at lochewe.mathy.remote.org>
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> > Content-Type: text/plain; charset=iso-8859-1
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> >
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> > Hi,
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> >
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> > > Often the administrative classification of a road is unclear / not
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> > signposted.
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> >
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> > [...]
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> >
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> > > Again, as far as I know, there's no obvious way where I am to determine
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> > > the legal classification of a road as trunk/primary/secondary/etc from
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> > > any signage on the road itself.
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> > Any attempt at distinguishing between physical/administrative
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> > situation should allow both *or* only one of them to be used, with
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> > software expected to use appropriate logic to make assumptions about
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> > the missing information.
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> >
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> > I may be on the ground and thus able to authoritatively tag the
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> > physical side of things; or I may be using an out-of-copyright (or
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> > otherwise legal) map which will give me the administrative status of
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> > something but I'll have no idea what it is like on the ground.
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> >
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> > On another note, as far as I understand Andy Robinson is working on a
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> > general (not just limited to highways) concept for making the
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> > distinction between physical and administrative aspects. Search for
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> > "STAGS" on the Wiki or the lists (there was a presentation at SOTM). I
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> > believe the concept has evolved a bit since it was presented, and has
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> > also been renamed (to "Cosmic" or "Cosmos" if I am not mistaken).
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> >
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> > Bye
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> > Frederik
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> >
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> > --
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> > Frederik Ramm  ##  eMail frederik at remote.org  ##  N49?00.09' E008?23.33'
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> >
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> PeterIto
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>
I don't think the highway tag should be used to describe driveability directly.
The highway tag should be used to describe what the road looks like
and then you can make assumptions about driveability from that.

If used in this way the highway tag itself is not biased towards cars. However,
it can seem that way since most of the roads being described are for cars.

If there is a completely separate bike path then I would make it be it's own way
and label it highway=bike path or something like that. It might be a good
idea to have a highway tag that indicates mixed use.

I'm not that concerned which tags are used as long as they are in the
correct class.
In addition to what the road looks like I think we are talking about
three classes of data here.

1. legality. Is it legal to ride a bike here?
2. rideability. Is it a good idea to ride a bike here? Is it only for
mountain bikes? Is it good for thin tire racing bikes?
3. route class. Is the route part of some bike route classification scheme?

Which tags you use are not that important as long as you keep these
three separate.

-- 
http://bowlad.com