[OSM-talk] tagging roads

[Roy Wallace]

On Sun, Aug 2, 2009 at 11:38 PM, Blaž Lorger<blaz.lorger at triera.net> wrote:
> To my knowledge there is no such thing as usual highway width. There are
> certain standards for width of newly built roads, but those usually increase
> over time, which means you will be forced to periodically reevaluate *ALL*
> "narrow" tagging.

+1

> Having actual road width is always more useful than having just some
> subjective estimate whether road is too narrow or not. Besides rendering you
> can use it to improve routing based on actual vehicle width/size.

+1.

> some subjective factor is inevitable, but at least it should be kept as low as
> possible.

+1

Tagging width=* is more faithful to what actually exists on the
ground, which is always the better long term approach. And the meaning
is much clearer than narrow=*, especially for those who only skim the
wiki.

Also, width=* interacts nicely with lanes=* - from these two tags you
can see the width of the entire way, and also calculate the width of
each lane. Whereas with narrow=*, it's not quite as clear whether this
refers to narrow lanes or a narrow way...