[OSM-talk] zones for motorway/in town/outof town?

[Lester Caine]

Guenther Meyer wrote:
> Am Thursday 21 May 2009 schrieb Lester Caine:
>> ALL roads have a defined maximum speed limit ... is this just a matter
>> of 'conversion to english'? The fact that a road does not have a
>> specific sign is not something that maxspeed is concerned with? At least
>> in my reading of the guide lines on maxspeed.
>>
> right, all roads have a defined limit.
> the proposal is:
> if there is a sign for a speed limit: use maxspeed = ...
> if not: use zone:traffic = ...
>   the maxspeed here can be derived from the zone tag.

For routing purposes ... building the time for a route ...
If maxspeed is set - use maxspeed, otherwise use the default for the
highway= type for your country which would imply that zone:traffic= is 
equivalent to highway=(residential/in_town) based on country again.

>>> my first suggestion was exactly this: why not use and extend the already
>>> existing tags for that, like "maxspeed = DE:in_town".
>>> but after some discussion it was clear that such a tag would imply more
>>> than just certain speed limits, as I already mentioned. that's why the
>>> idea of using a more generic key was coming up.
>> A key on a road segment is a lot more practical than defining another
>> layer of complexity.
> I agree with you. I would set those zone tags on the roads, not on a polygon.
> 
>> And I can understand that maxspeed=DE:in_town makes a lot of sense since
>> a global change to that limit does not require every way to be updated.
>> There is a debate on changing the UK 60 limit to 50 which will need a
>> lot of changes to these tags, but at present every road I go down seems
>> to have had it's default limit lowered to 50 or even 40 anyway. Nearly
>> got caught out with a new limit and speed camera last week :(
>>
> 
>> So the next question has to be - because I'm not SEEING the reason - why
>> is 'maxspeed=DE:in_town' a problem? What is it implying other than a
>> fact of law?
>>
> if you are in-town there are the following things implied (I hope I can 
> translate them right...):
> 
> - maxspeed = 50
> 
> - motor vehicles up to 3.5t can freely choose the lane on which they want to 
> drive on streets with more tahn one lane for the driving direction. also they 
> can drive faster on the right lane as other cars on the left lane.
> 
> - parking is allowed up to 5m before a railroad crossing sign (St. Andrew's 
> cross?)
> 
> - steady parking for trucks with more that 7.5t is not allowed in residential 
> and clinic areas
> 
> - for parking in the dark parking lights are enough
> 
> - if you like to overtake another vehicle you must not signalize this with 
> horn or flasher
> 
> I know, that not all of these are currently relevant for osm. but if the day 
> comes, when such data will be important, it's easier to alter the central 
> definiton of "DE:in_town" than to add new tags for that to every single road.

All of that needs adding to 
http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Proposed_features/trafficzone
( now that I've found it ... )
but rule one is 'highway=' should exist for every road so if that 
highway=motorway takes priority and should define any other motorway 
conditions that apply, and maxspeed then adjusts the motorway limit if 
required.
Rendering and routing use the highway= tag to identify roads, and can 
add speed limits based on the existing rules.
Additional traffic restrictions would be linked to 
highway=DE:residential rather than creating yet another minefield?

I've made a case in the past for replacing a lot of this with simple 
numeric tags that display text using your local country code, but having 
something like highway=residential pulling up the local set of default 
rules - such as the above for DE located roads - looks a lot more 
practical than adding yet another set of 'rules' that need tags adding?

>> I would also point out that maxspeed needs a tidy up anyway since it
>> does not have any provision for my previous note about VARIABLE speed
>> limits. These are being applied more and more to UK motorways to cope
>> with the congestion, and are changed based on traffic conditions. Roads
>> in residential areas my also have lower limits during school days at
>> start end end times.
> variable depending only on? or other things?
> I have writtena proposal on the german list some time ago to allow the tagging 
> of time-dependant resctrictions in an easy way, that would be also machine- 
> and human-readable. but I don't know if it is used by someone...

The motorway restrictions are FULLY variable, in that the traffic 
management centre will apply them as need demands, and the hard shoulder 
of motorways can be introduced as an extra lane in some areas to reduce 
conjestion - at any time.
School restrictions tend to apply when a locally activated warning is 
displayed, so while this is basically a timed event, the times can vary 
depending on the local situation.
Now if we had a website that gives the current status of each of these 
  situations then things would be easier, but if you are not going to 
reach an area for some time, then even that is not a lot of help :(
But these are basically variable rules applied to maxspeed= and 
overiding the default normally applied.

-- 
Lester Caine - G8HFL
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