[OSM-talk] relations in order not to fragment roads (was: correctly mapping avenues)

[Ben Laenen]

On Monday 11 February 2008, Karl Newman wrote:
> That seems like a reasonable approach--see my reply to Bernd's email
> in another forked thread. The way should be long, but not
> unreasonably so, and if the name or highway type changes, that seems
> like a logical place to split it.

I thought with the addition of relations we would go towards moving all 
information up from ways to segments. So instead of putting for example 
the street name in the way, put it in a relation (and that would 
immediately solve things like dual carriage ways or cul-de-sacs with 
the same street name, which need different ways anyway). If a road has 
a reference number, put it also in a relation together with all other 
roads with that reference, etc.

So, in my eyes it would be something like splitting ways up at all 
junctions (to my knowledge that also simplifies things for route 
planners), or on metadata changes like speed, and move info up if more 
than one way belongs to the same property.

If we add a thing like segment relations as is proposed, we'll 
effectively end up with another level next to points, segments and 
relations (since things like route relations will again have these 
segment relations contained in them), which will likely increase 
complexity a lot in my eyes.

Greetings
Ben