[OSM-talk] tagging and rendering highways in the USA and elsewhere

[Peter Miller]

I hope I didn't come across as aggressive, but I did want to point out some
really weird inconsistencies that do need to be resolved and wanted to
encourage debate. In the UK a secondary roads is a minor road, in San
Francisco this
<http://maps.yahoo.com/#mvt=s&lat=37.668663&lon=-122.485307&zoom=18>
junction (a multilevel road with multiple flyovers) is classed as secondary
whereas this
<http://maps.yahoo.com/#mvt=s&lat=37.428439&lon=-121.909597&zoom=19>  one
(an urban road with traffic signal controlled junctions) is classed as
primary.

 

I suspect that fact reason that the first is classed as secondary is because
the mapper wanted an orange road and that it should really be a 'trunk'
road.

 

I really don't mind what the rendered colours are, that is for local
discussion and there may even be multiple versions with different styles as
far as I am concernedm, but currently the rendering is uk-centric and that
seems inappropriate for the USA and seems to be causing distortions with
tagging.

 

I do think that the hierarchy of road classes needs to be respected across
OSM (where a trunk road is more important than primary road than secondary
road etc) allowing a routing engine to direct drivers worldwide onto the
main routes (and also possibly keep pedestrians and cyclists off them). I do
think that the '_link' element needs to be used to help sat-nav systems give
meaningful instructions and not give out information about turning onto link
roads when it should say 'turn onto Highway 101'. I do think the description
of the highway road classes in Map Features needs to be internationalised to
allow people in new countries to chose the right mapping to their own
infrastructure and naming and colour conventions.

 

Personally I hope that San Francisco will prove a useful test case where
many of the outstanding internationalisation issues can be bottomed out
before there before large scale tagging across many other parts of the
country.

 

Currently everything except interstate is tagged as 'residential'. If it was
agreed that state highways should be 'trunk' roads then would it be sensible
to design a 'bot' to scan un-touched tiger data for road names including the
word 'state' but not the word 'interstate' and automatically update the tags
from 'highway=residential' to 'highway=trunk' (or whatever is agreed).

 

 

Regards,

 

 

 

 

Peter

 

> -----Original Message-----

> From: Andy Allan [mailto:gravitystorm at gmail.com]

> Sent: 18 April 2008 17:38

> To: Peter Miller

> Cc: Talk Openstreetmap

> Subject: Re: [OSM-talk] tagging and rendering highways in the USA and

> elsewhere

> 

> > If we can agree on the rendering rules and get both Mapnik and

> osmarender

> > sorted out for the USA

> 

> "sorted out" - they both work fine. Even if we had a production-ready

> mechanism for country-specific rendering, it would still be a matter

> of opinion, or more accurately, a matter of cartographic style, as to

> whether we want to render the freeways in orange. After all, it's just

> a map, and conventions are only conventions, not hard and fast rules.

> 

> Not saying that we shouldn't, just that your phrasing is quite

> aggressive for what is a matter of taste. I wouldn't want someone to

> say that my choice of colours for the cycle map contours needs

> "sorting out" (even if that might well be true!).

> 

> Cheers,

> Andy

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