[OSM-talk] Unsigned road refs (was: Re: Can wikidata links help fight name inflation?)

SomeoneElse lists at atownsend.org.uk
Sat May 30 13:03:56 UTC 2015


On 30/05/2015 13:51, Jóhannes Birgir Jensson wrote:
> I find it odd that inaction, incapability or incompetence of local 
> sign installers is a worry for a database of geographical facts, which 
> OSM is.

Why should it be incompetence?  Near where I live there's a ring road 
around a local town.  There are no signs indicating the ref of the road 
because that's not the information that the road planners want to get 
across.  Instead, they'll add the destinations that people actually want 
to get to, with the ref of that road in brackets.  It's not 
incompetence; it's trying to communicate clearly with road users.

>
> Þann 30.5.2015 12:22, skrifaði Martin Koppenhoefer:
>>
>>> Am 29.05.2015 um 13:58 schrieb moltonel 3x Combo <moltonel at gmail.com>:
>>>
>>> That's really neat. How do you know wether a street is signposted or
>>> not ? I don't know of any tag that gives that info.
>>
>> there are ~600 visible_name
>> 37000 unsigned_ref
>> 518 unsigned
>> 400 signed
>> 161 name:signed
>> 124 name:sign
>> 86 ref:signed
>> 48 unsigned_name
>> 47 ref:unsigned
>> 16 name:signposted
>>
>> I haven't checked on which kind of objects or which do not refer to 
>> highways or names
>> Very likely I also missed some variants
>>
>> It seems that for names nobody cares to say whether they are 
>> signposted or not (or maybe only when the sign is different from the 
>> actual name), while for ref it seems common practice(?) to use 
>> unsigned_ref
>

Looking at the values and distribution, those look to be mainly 
US-based, where a road can be part of multiple routes.  It's a slightly 
different problem that's being solved there, I think, and again I 
suspect it's due to the road planners trying to communicate clearly with 
road users.

Cheers,

Andy




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