[OSM-talk] Divided roads proposal

[Martin Koppenhoefer]

2009/12/4 Morten Kjeldgaard <mok at bioxray.dk>

> There's nothing you can do with drawing that can't be done with
> tagging, and there's in principle nothing being done with tagging that
> can't be rendered beautifully on the final map. It only depends on the
> richness of the tagging language and the sophistication of the
> renderers.
>

I just agree partly
1) if you would map intersections of dualcarriage-ways precisely according
to the standards, there would be just 1 intersection node at junctions,
because at the junction there is no physical barrier and therefore the
dualcarriage-way gets 1 way, it doesn't stay 2 parallel ways.
2) there is lots of situations where you can't easily represent complex
geometrical configurations just with tagging. Tagging works well for regular
shaped stuff, but when it comes to more fluid situations (not classical
roads with standard lanes but areas like in pedestrian zones,
living_streets, medieval situations, ... you get the best representation by
drawing an area. Squares are one of the key features for representation of
the individual structure of a city. There shapes tell you about the history
and the influencing factors that interacted while the urban tissue evolved.
3) Drawing dual carriage ways as 2 parallel ways is a very easy way to solve
lots of junctions, where you would otherwise have to add an awful lot of
turning restrictions (or split the way and add divider.tags/relations).
4) It offers also more positional accuracy as well, as dual carriage ways
usually consist of more lanes than the other roads.
See here:
http://maps.google.it/maps?hl=de&ie=UTF8&ll=41.912905,12.481273&spn=0.002822,0.004823&t=h&z=18
situations like this are IMHO not resolveable (with appropriate effort) just
by tagging.
5) Keep it simple. Here are lots of experts discussing about the ideal
scheme, but there are far more users that don't participate in list
discussions (or even read them) and contribute less frequently and IMHO this
group will grow much faster then the expert group. The easier it is for them
to participate, the more they will become.

cheers,
Martin
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