[OSM-talk] [RFC] highway=unclassified currently is too ambiguous, so here's my proposal to fix it.

[Shaun McDonald]

On 5 Aug 2009, at 20:59, Christiaan Welvaart wrote:

> On Wed, 5 Aug 2009, Richard Mann wrote:
>
>> I'd define a "rural" as a road which is (usually) maintained by a  
>> public
>> body, and open to public access, but where only partial provision  
>> is made
>> for vehicles travelling in opposite directions to pass (be that  
>> lower-grade
>> shoulders, Australian-style or occasional formal or informal  
>> widenings,
>> UK-style).
>
> That's still too much of a physical definition (:
> How about:
>
> highway=rural: a road not in a built-up area that provides direct  
> access
> to buildings (e.g. farms), similar in function to a residential road  
> in
> built-up areas. Such roads often have a smaller width than connecting
> roads like unclassified and tertiary ways, and are not supposed to  
> be used
> for passing through the rural area.
>
> A possible additional characteristic: no bicycle facilities are  
> present on
> such roads. Just like residential roads they are not very suitable for
> cyclists passing through: for residential roads, many cyclists passing
> them could cause the people living there to complain, while cycling on
> rural roads is relatively unsafe/uncomfortable because of the road  
> width
> and large vehicles using the road (combined with the lack of bicycle  
> lanes
> or ways).
>

Am I right in seeing that you think that residential streets are not  
for cycling along? Then explain why the majority of the London Cycle  
Network is along residential streets. Many of the rural roads I've  
been on are quiet country lanes with little traffic, some of which are  
part of the National Cycle Network.

The way that you disambiguate the different types of unclassified road  
is by adding other properties to the road like the max speed, the  
width, number of lanes and the surface. Then whatever is using the osm  
data can use the specific data in whatever way they think is most  
appropriate. Please stop trying to come up with more and more highway  
values.

Shaun

> A problem could be that rural areas may have a whole network of  
> roads that
> all look the same. I suppose they can all be tagged highway=rural in  
> such
> a case(?), but does that match the above description?
>
>
>     Christiaan
>
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