[OSM-talk] Misclassified roads

[David Earl]

On 11/07/2008 09:43, Steve Hill wrote:
> On Thu, 10 Jul 2008, Martijn van Oosterhout wrote:
> 
>> I don't want to be annoying, but what about the ordinary roads, which
>> don't fit in the above classification. With houses on both side but
>> limited to 50km/h for example.
> 
> Well, this is why I don't like the highway=residential tag.

I don't see the problem in that example:

highway=residential
maxspeed=50

(though in the UK, tghat would be 30mph, which is the default anyway, so 
the description is the perfect example of highway=residential).

If the speed limit were higher (or even if it wasn't), that might well 
be because it is a more significant road in the first place, perhaps a 
local distributor which is still residential but has greater local 
significance. As several of us said yesterday, in the absence of visible 
official designation, that's a subjective judgement, but in that case, I 
would use
   highway=tertiary
   abutters=residential
   maxspeed=...
(and personally, I use units - maxspeed=40mph - but that's another 
discussion we've already done to death; and I haven't been as rigorous 
as I should have been in recording non-default speed limits).

David