[OSM-talk] Highway=trunk : harmonization between countries ?

Matej Lieskovský lieskovsky.matej at gmail.com
Fri Feb 23 17:32:23 UTC 2018


Don't get me wrong, this system might work well for countries without an
official system, but what do you expect to happen in the EU?
Will we have "highway=primary" + "class=tertiary" because some random road
happens to be a shortcut? Or do you expect us in Czechia to use "class=II"
while germans use "class=S" so that it actually matches the signage? Will
the renderer parse ref numbers (and ignore the main tag) or will we receive
hundreds of complaints about some section of the road having (what every
local resident will consider to be) the wrong class?

How do you determine "important cities" when even the line between towns
and cities is country-dependant? Or is using administrative differences
only not OK for roads?

Even Waze actually follows local administration.


Long story short: I am strongly against deploying this system in countries
with a functioning official classification system.

On 23 February 2018 at 18:06, Fernando Trebien <fernando.trebien at gmail.com>
wrote:

> +1
>
> Administrative classification is not strictly related everywhere to
> signage, structure and access rights.
>
> On Fri, Feb 23, 2018 at 1:12 PM, djakk djakk <djakk.djakk at gmail.com>
> wrote:
> > I know that « trunk »  is country-dependent but why not moving it to a
> > worldwide definition ? Administrative classification could be moved to
> other
> > tags :)
> >
> >
> > djakk
> >
> > Le ven. 23 févr. 2018 à 16:06, Matej Lieskovský <
> lieskovsky.matej at gmail.com>
> > a écrit :
> >>
> >> Greetings
> >> I'd like to caution against using this system globally. In Czechia,
> roads
> >> are formally classified into classes, which influence signage, ref
> numbers
> >> and so on. Deploying this system here would make the tag
> confusing/useless
> >> and would likely face enormous backlash. I have no problems with using
> this
> >> system in countries without a clearly defined road classification, but
> >> please don't touch the countries where there is no doubt about what
> class
> >> any given road is.
> >> Happy mapping!
> >>
> >> On 22 February 2018 at 16:20, djakk djakk <djakk.djakk at gmail.com>
> wrote:
> >>>
> >>> Hello,
> >>>
> >>> I totally agree with you, the definition you provide,
> >>> administrative-free, tends to the same osm map between countries.
> >>>
> >>> djakk
> >>>
> >>> Le jeu. 15 févr. 2018 à 19:18, Fernando Trebien
> >>> <fernando.trebien at gmail.com> a écrit :
> >>>>
> >>>> Landing on this discussion several months late. I've just heard of it
> >>>> by reading a wiki talk page [1].
> >>>>
> >>>> Since 13 February 2009, the wiki [2] criticises highway classification
> >>>> as problematic/unverifiable. This has also been subject to a lot of
> >>>> controversy (and edit wars) in my local community (Brazil), especially
> >>>> regarding the effect of (lack of) pavement.
> >>>>
> >>>> In trying to achieve greater consensus some years ago, I decided to
> >>>> seek opinions elsewhere and finally I arrived at this scheme [3] which
> >>>> I think is very useful, if not perfect yet. It can be easily
> >>>> summarised like this:
> >>>> - trunk: best routes between large/important cities
> >>>> - primary: best routes between cities and above
> >>>> - secondary: best routes between towns/suburbs and above
> >>>> - tertiary: best routes between villages/neighbourhoods and above
> >>>> - unclassified: best routes between other place=* and above
> >>>>
> >>>> For example, the best route between two villages would be at least
> >>>> tertiary. So would be the best route between a village and a town or a
> >>>> city. Parts of this route might have a higher class in case they are
> >>>> part of a route between more important places.
> >>>>
> >>>> It surely raises the problem of determining optimal routes. Maybe a
> >>>> sensible criterion would be average travel time without traffic
> >>>> congestion. A number of vehicles may be selected for this average -
> >>>> could be motorcycle+car+bus+truck, or simply car+truck.
> >>>>
> >>>> Early results in my area [4, in Portuguese] seem promising and have
> >>>> produced more consensus than any previous proposals. To me, this
> >>>> method seems to:
> >>>> - resist alternations in classification along the same road
> >>>> - work across borders (where classification discontinuities are
> >>>> expected because each country is using different classification
> >>>> criteria)
> >>>> - account for road network topology
> >>>> - work in countries with mostly precarious/unpaved roads or
> >>>> without/unknown official highway classes
> >>>> - work between settlements as well as within settlements
> >>>>
> >>>> Borderline cases are probably inescapable in any system that does not
> >>>> use solely criteria that are directly verifiable - from the ground, or
> >>>> from the law. Maybe, in certain developed countries, the system is so
> >>>> well organized that merely checking signs/laws is sufficient. That
> >>>> does not mean it is like that everywhere on the planet.
> >>>>
> >>>> OSM has so far received a lot of input from communities in developed
> >>>> countries (mostly Europe, North America and Australia) and hasn't
> >>>> given much attention to less developed/organized countries. What comes
> >>>> closest to this is what the HOT Team does, but the judgment of road
> >>>> classification one can do from satellite images in a foreign country
> >>>> is much more limited than the criteria that have been raised in this
> >>>> thread so far.
> >>>>
> >>>> I wouldn't endorse tags such as maxspeed:practical due to lack of
> >>>> verifiability (it should be obvious that different types of vehicles
> >>>> would achieve different practical speeds). It is better to use the
> >>>> legal speed in maxspeed=* and describe the practical reason for a
> >>>> lower speed using surface=*, smoothness=*, and, who knows, maybe the
> >>>> not yet approved hazard=* [5] (though that is intended for signed
> >>>> hazards, not subjective/opinionated hazards).
> >>>>
> >>>> For the sake of long-term sanity, I also wouldn't mix the purpose of
> >>>> one tag with the purpose of other tags. To describe the surface, there
> >>>> is surface=*, smoothness=* and tracktype=*. To describe access rights,
> >>>> there is access=*, foot=*, bicycle=*, motor_vehicle=*, etc. To
> >>>> describe legal speed, maxspeed=*. To describe curves, there's
> >>>> geometry.
> >>>>
> >>>> Purpose, perhaps, is the main issue. What is the purpose of highway
> >>>> classification? Is it to save us the work of adding extra tags? Is it
> >>>> to allow the renderer to produce a cleaner output at low zoom levels?
> >>>> Is it to allow routers to assume default speeds? Maybe to guide their
> >>>> routing heuristics? Is it to express some sort of importance? If so,
> >>>> by which perspective - urbanistic, traffic engineering, movement,
> >>>> commercial value, cultural/fame, historic, some combination of those?
> >>>> Should the purpose be the same in every country?
> >>>>
> >>>> It may be interesting to also discuss the classification adopted by
> >>>> other maps. I don't have a reference for Google (originally TeleAtlas)
> >>>> or Here.com (originally Navteq), but Waze publishes its per-country
> >>>> road classification criteria in its wiki. [6-16]
> >>>>
> >>>> [1]
> >>>> https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Talk:Tag:highway%3Dtrunk
> #change_.22high_performance.22_to_.22high_importance.22
> >>>> [2] https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Verifiability#Problemati
> c_tags
> >>>> [3]
> >>>> https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/User:Ftrebien/Drafts/Gen
> eric_highway_classification_principles#Schematic_diagram_
> and_general_comments
> >>>> [4] https://forum.openstreetmap.org/viewtopic.php?pid=674296#p674296
> >>>> [5] https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Proposed_features/hazard
> >>>> [6] https://wazeopedia.waze.com/wiki/USA/Road_types
> >>>> [7] https://wazeopedia.waze.com/wiki/UnitedKingdom/Roads#Road_types
> >>>> [8] https://wazeopedia.waze.com/wiki/Canada/Main_Page#Road_Types
> >>>> [9] https://wazeopedia.waze.com/wiki/Commons/Road_Types/India
> >>>> [10]
> >>>> https://wazeopedia.waze.com/wiki/Brazil/Como_categorizar_e_
> nomear_vias
> >>>> [11]
> >>>> https://wazeopedia.waze.com/wiki/Germany/Kartenlegende_(Deutschland)
> >>>> [12] https://wazeopedia.waze.com/wiki/France/Classification_France
> >>>> [13] https://wazeopedia.waze.com/wiki/Italy/Tipologia_delle_strade
> >>>> [14] https://wazeopedia.waze.com/wiki/Indonesia/Panduan_Tipe_Jalan
> >>>> [15] https://wiki.waze.com/wiki/%E9%81%93%E8%B7%AF%E7%B1%BB%E5%9E%8B
> >>>> [16]
> >>>> https://wiki.waze.com/wiki/%E3%80%8C%E9%81%93%E8%B7%AF%E7%A8
> %AE%E5%88%A5%E3%80%8D
> >>>>
> >>>> --
> >>>> Fernando Trebien
> >>>> +55 (51) 99962-5409
> >>>>
> >>>> "Nullius in verba."
> >>>>
> >>>> _______________________________________________
> >>>> talk mailing list
> >>>> talk at openstreetmap.org
> >>>> https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
> >>>
> >>>
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> >>>
> >>
> >
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>
>
>
> --
> Fernando Trebien
> +55 (51) 9962-5409
>
> "Nullius in verba."
>
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