[OSM-talk] Abandon all ways: a polemic

[Frederik Ramm]

Hi,

Laurence Penney wrote:
 > I don't like how error-prone we are with roads that are not
 > perfectly uniform: when a road comes to a bridge the way stops, a new
 > little way starts with one extra "bridge=yes" tag, then the way
 > restarts with, hopefully, the same attribute set as before the bridge.

All true, and I share your concerns, especially in situations where 
there is some kind of modification to a way that exists only for a small 
stretch (e.g. a little bit of pedestrian area in the middle, or a little 
bridge or tunnel). Other data models solve this by "restricted 
attributes", where the attribute can apply to only one lane or only a 
stretch of the way being described. So you could have a long road 
modeled as one way, with restricted attributes like "bridge from 
position 1000m to position 1500m", "oneway between intersections A and 
B", or "surface=gravel for the last 500 metres".

Your idea of ditching ways altogether because their proper use is not 
enforced seems a bit over the top to me. The same discipline that you 
would ask of mappers (and their editors) working with the segments-only 
approach would, if applied to our current world, produce the same 
quality of results, no?

Bye
Frederik

-- 
Frederik Ramm  ##  eMail frederik at remote.org  ##  N49°00.09' E008°23.33'