Re: [Talk-GB] Unfit for motors - tagging for routing
One thing that I'd definitely do (and you may be doing already) would be to record details from the actual sign in a note tag. That's not going to help routers, but it will help future mappers and aid retagging when at some point in the future we've reached a concensus about how best to map these things. Cheers, Andy (channelling Sybil Fawlty - specialist subject the bleeding obvious) ___ Talk-GB mailing list Talk-GB@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-gb
Re: [Talk-GB] Unfit for motors - tagging for routing
[I'm a bit confused about replying to the group, hope this goes to the right destination] Belated thanks for the various comments, I've been away. Of the various views, I tend to like highway=service + designation=unclassified_highway as the most useful. There are a lot of these signs in the Cotswolds - I could probably go out now and find 100 before it gets dark. They include 'Unfit for HGVs' (or sometimes lorries), 'Unfit for wide vehicles'/'Unfit for long vehicles' (but no length/width given), 'Unfit for long and wide vehicles' (but presumably your short and narrow heavy vehicle is OK), etc, etc. 'Unsuitable' is sometimes used, but I think 'Unfit' is more common, I suspect because it avoids a wider sign on a narrow road.. I've been ignoring these signs as too difficult to deal with until now, but I thought there ought to be a solution to the 'Unfit for motors' one. The legal definition is obviously important, but I think something more is needed to make the map useful (IMO, usefulness of the map is as important as accuracy). Many of the Unfit for motors signs are for roads that you would happily drive along as one way streets, it's the lack of passing places that makes them problematic. The same sign is used for a narrow but decent tarmac road with no passing places for 400 yards and a lane to a house that disintegrates into an impassable ORPA (in OS terms) after the house. More generally, there are lots of rural areas where all the roads are minor, but some are more (or less) minor than others. It would be useful to have tags that can distinguish between the useful minor roads and the ones that really are best avoided. I agree highway=service is unsatisfactory, but with designation=unclassified_highway it seems the least worst route to a helpful map. Rob ___ Talk-GB mailing list Talk-GB@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-gb
Re: [Talk-GB] Unfit for motors - tagging for routing
Hi, This probably won't help the eventual tagging, but the 'unfit for 'wide / long vehicles' bit is to do with legislation, both UK nowadays European. I think the relevant bit is the 'Construction Use Regulations' which lays down the maximum sizes for normal road usage. If the vehicle exceeds these dimensions (either weight, length, width or height' then they become an 'abnormal indivisible load', and require notifications to the police other specialist departments before they are allowed to move. You also need special training a permit / licence before you can drive one, and may need an escort if it is big enough. The vehicle is fitted with boards marking it as a 'long vehicle' or wide or whatever. In simple terms, the dimensions have been standardised across the EEC, and if what your driving is big, it will be labelled as such you will know anyway. Regards Nick (Tallguy) On 17/12/12 14:35, cotswolds mapper wrote: [I'm a bit confused about replying to the group, hope this goes to the right destination] Belated thanks for the various comments, I've been away. Of the various views, I tend to like highway=service + designation=unclassified_highway as the most useful. There are a lot of these signs in the Cotswolds - I could probably go out now and find 100 before it gets dark. They include 'Unfit for HGVs' (or sometimes lorries), 'Unfit for wide vehicles'/'Unfit for long vehicles' (but no length/width given), 'Unfit for long and wide vehicles' (but presumably your short and narrow heavy vehicle is OK), etc, etc. 'Unsuitable' is sometimes used, but I think 'Unfit' is more common, I suspect because it avoids a wider sign on a narrow road.. I've been ignoring these signs as too difficult to deal with until now, but I thought there ought to be a solution to the 'Unfit for motors' one. The legal definition is obviously important, but I think something more is needed to make the map useful (IMO, usefulness of the map is as important as accuracy). Many of the Unfit for motors signs are for roads that you would happily drive along as one way streets, it's the lack of passing places that makes them problematic. The same sign is used for a narrow but decent tarmac road with no passing places for 400 yards and a lane to a house that disintegrates into an impassable ORPA (in OS terms) after the house. More generally, there are lots of rural areas where all the roads are minor, but some are more (or less) minor than others. It would be useful to have tags that can distinguish between the useful minor roads and the ones that really are best avoided. I agree highway=service is unsatisfactory, but with designation=unclassified_highway it seems the least worst route to a helpful map. Rob ___ Talk-GB mailing list Talk-GB@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-gb ___ Talk-GB mailing list Talk-GB@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-gb
[Talk-GB] Unfit for motors - tagging for routing
There are lots of roads where I map which have Unfit for motors signs (blue/white advisory) but are normal maintained roads in limited but regular use. Typically they are narrowish, with lots of bends and often steep. In general anything up to maybe the size of a skip lorry can get through (though some are too narrow), but what makes them unfit for motors is very long stretches without passing places,so if you meet something coming the other way, one of you has a very long, difficult reverse. They are currently tagged in OSM as minor roads, which of course means they are eligible for routing. As an example, most (all?) routing services (not just OSM-based, Google Maps has the same problem) will route Chalford Hill to Stroud along Dark Lane, but Dark Lane has an Unfit for motors sign. It's the shortest and most direct route from the A419 to most of Chalford Hill, but very few locals use it. I'd like to tag these roads so that routing services will avoid them, but can't find any direct way of doing this. I've seen elsewhere that one mapper has tagged similar roads as Service roads. This has two advantages: routing services will ignore them(?); and service roads render differently so anyone using the map visually will be less likely to use these roads. It's pushing the current definition of service road rather a lot, but if you consider a service road to be a road that should only be used to access locations connected to the service road, then it seems within the spirit of the definition. There's a specific issue with Chalford Hill at the moment. Road closures (due to collapsed retaining walls) mean that the popular routes to the valley (Old Neighbourhood and to a lesser extent Coppice Hill) are closed and likely to remain so for over a month. My local source (a parish councilor) says that most locals are using a long diversion and avoiding Dark Lane. (Traffic on Dark Lane has increased, and there was recently a fist fight when two cars met and neither driver would reverse. Locals want to make it temporarily one way, which would massively increase its usefulness, but there's no quick way of doing this.) My two questions: 1) Should OSM data discourage use of routes that locals - who are likely to be better than outsiders at coping with narrow lanes - avoid as too problematic; 2) Is tagging usable but 'Unfit for motors' roads as service roads an acceptable way of doing this or is there a better method (that is recognised by current renderers and routing engines). As my opinion on (1) is yes, I've tagged Dark Lane and a couple of even more difficult roads as service roads, at least for the duration of the road closures, but will happily revert the tag if there's a better way. Rob ___ Talk-GB mailing list Talk-GB@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-gb
Re: [Talk-GB] Unfit for motors - tagging for routing
motor_vehicl http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Key:motor_vehiclee=no should suffice I would have thought? On 10 December 2012 13:36, cotswolds mapper osmcotswo...@gmail.com wrote: There are lots of roads where I map which have Unfit for motors signs (blue/white advisory) but are normal maintained roads in limited but regular use. Typically they are narrowish, with lots of bends and often steep. In general anything up to maybe the size of a skip lorry can get through (though some are too narrow), but what makes them unfit for motors is very long stretches without passing places,so if you meet something coming the other way, one of you has a very long, difficult reverse. They are currently tagged in OSM as minor roads, which of course means they are eligible for routing. As an example, most (all?) routing services (not just OSM-based, Google Maps has the same problem) will route Chalford Hill to Stroud along Dark Lane, but Dark Lane has an Unfit for motors sign. It's the shortest and most direct route from the A419 to most of Chalford Hill, but very few locals use it. I'd like to tag these roads so that routing services will avoid them, but can't find any direct way of doing this. I've seen elsewhere that one mapper has tagged similar roads as Service roads. This has two advantages: routing services will ignore them(?); and service roads render differently so anyone using the map visually will be less likely to use these roads. It's pushing the current definition of service road rather a lot, but if you consider a service road to be a road that should only be used to access locations connected to the service road, then it seems within the spirit of the definition. There's a specific issue with Chalford Hill at the moment. Road closures (due to collapsed retaining walls) mean that the popular routes to the valley (Old Neighbourhood and to a lesser extent Coppice Hill) are closed and likely to remain so for over a month. My local source (a parish councilor) says that most locals are using a long diversion and avoiding Dark Lane. (Traffic on Dark Lane has increased, and there was recently a fist fight when two cars met and neither driver would reverse. Locals want to make it temporarily one way, which would massively increase its usefulness, but there's no quick way of doing this.) My two questions: 1) Should OSM data discourage use of routes that locals - who are likely to be better than outsiders at coping with narrow lanes - avoid as too problematic; 2) Is tagging usable but 'Unfit for motors' roads as service roads an acceptable way of doing this or is there a better method (that is recognised by current renderers and routing engines). As my opinion on (1) is yes, I've tagged Dark Lane and a couple of even more difficult roads as service roads, at least for the duration of the road closures, but will happily revert the tag if there's a better way. Rob ___ Talk-GB mailing list Talk-GB@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-gb ___ Talk-GB mailing list Talk-GB@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-gb
Re: [Talk-GB] Unfit for motors - tagging for routing
from the wiki http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Map_Features motor_vehicl http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Key:motor_vehiclee=no Access permission for any motorized vehicle these routes do have access permission, but are signed as unsuitable/unfit which is more advisory Best Wishes Peter On 10 December 2012 14:30, Aidan McGinley aidmcgin+openstreet...@gmail.comwrote: motor_vehicl http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Key:motor_vehiclee=no should suffice I would have thought? On 10 December 2012 13:36, cotswolds mapper osmcotswo...@gmail.comwrote: There are lots of roads where I map which have Unfit for motors signs (blue/white advisory) but are normal maintained roads in limited but regular use. Typically they are narrowish, with lots of bends and often steep. In general anything up to maybe the size of a skip lorry can get through (though some are too narrow), but what makes them unfit for motors is very long stretches without passing places,so if you meet something coming the other way, one of you has a very long, difficult reverse. They are currently tagged in OSM as minor roads, which of course means they are eligible for routing. As an example, most (all?) routing services (not just OSM-based, Google Maps has the same problem) will route Chalford Hill to Stroud along Dark Lane, but Dark Lane has an Unfit for motors sign. It's the shortest and most direct route from the A419 to most of Chalford Hill, but very few locals use it. I'd like to tag these roads so that routing services will avoid them, but can't find any direct way of doing this. I've seen elsewhere that one mapper has tagged similar roads as Service roads. This has two advantages: routing services will ignore them(?); and service roads render differently so anyone using the map visually will be less likely to use these roads. It's pushing the current definition of service road rather a lot, but if you consider a service road to be a road that should only be used to access locations connected to the service road, then it seems within the spirit of the definition. There's a specific issue with Chalford Hill at the moment. Road closures (due to collapsed retaining walls) mean that the popular routes to the valley (Old Neighbourhood and to a lesser extent Coppice Hill) are closed and likely to remain so for over a month. My local source (a parish councilor) says that most locals are using a long diversion and avoiding Dark Lane. (Traffic on Dark Lane has increased, and there was recently a fist fight when two cars met and neither driver would reverse. Locals want to make it temporarily one way, which would massively increase its usefulness, but there's no quick way of doing this.) My two questions: 1) Should OSM data discourage use of routes that locals - who are likely to be better than outsiders at coping with narrow lanes - avoid as too problematic; 2) Is tagging usable but 'Unfit for motors' roads as service roads an acceptable way of doing this or is there a better method (that is recognised by current renderers and routing engines). As my opinion on (1) is yes, I've tagged Dark Lane and a couple of even more difficult roads as service roads, at least for the duration of the road closures, but will happily revert the tag if there's a better way. Rob ___ Talk-GB mailing list Talk-GB@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-gb ___ Talk-GB mailing list Talk-GB@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-gb ___ Talk-GB mailing list Talk-GB@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-gb
Re: [Talk-GB] Unfit for motors - tagging for routing
motor_vehicle=no says that motor vehicles aren't legally allowed along the road. That's not the case as Aidan has pointed out that these are the blue-backed advisory signs. If going with the commonly-used tags then I think that, whilst it's still technically not right, motor_vehicle=destination would be a better hack. However I don't like hacks. There are several roads near me marked Unsuitable for HGVs, a similar blue-backed advisory sign, which I've tagged with hgv=unsuitable. I don't know whether any of the routers actually do anything with this at the moment, but I think that the best tagging for the Unfit for motors would be the equivalent motor_vehicle=unfit or motor_vehicle=unsuitable. Personally I can't see any difference between saying unfit or unsuitable, so I'd be tempted to go with the one that's currently got the greatest number of uses, motor_vehicle=unsuitable (though with only 11 uses according to taginfo it's hardly high!; 0 instances of motor_vehicle=unfit). I think that changing the class of the road to service isn't the best way of recording the data. These roads will quite often legally be an unclassified highway and changing the class away from that just isn't accurate. In my view it'd be better for the routers to start taking into account the x=unsuitable style of tagging, though I realise that it's the usual chicken and egg situation here when the use of such tags is currently very sparse. From: Aidan McGinley [mailto:aidmcgin+openstreet...@gmail.com] Sent: 10 December 2012 14:30 To: cotswolds mapper Cc: talk-gb Subject: Re: [Talk-GB] Unfit for motors - tagging for routing http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Key:motor_vehicle motor_vehicle=no should suffice I would have thought? On 10 December 2012 13:36, cotswolds mapper osmcotswo...@gmail.com mailto:osmcotswo...@gmail.com wrote: There are lots of roads where I map which have Unfit for motors signs (blue/white advisory) but are normal maintained roads in limited but regular use. Typically they are narrowish, with lots of bends and often steep. In general anything up to maybe the size of a skip lorry can get through (though some are too narrow), but what makes them unfit for motors is very long stretches without passing places,so if you meet something coming the other way, one of you has a very long, difficult reverse. They are currently tagged in OSM as minor roads, which of course means they are eligible for routing. As an example, most (all?) routing services (not just OSM-based, Google Maps has the same problem) will route Chalford Hill to Stroud along Dark Lane, but Dark Lane has an Unfit for motors sign. It's the shortest and most direct route from the A419 to most of Chalford Hill, but very few locals use it. I'd like to tag these roads so that routing services will avoid them, but can't find any direct way of doing this. I've seen elsewhere that one mapper has tagged similar roads as Service roads. This has two advantages: routing services will ignore them(?); and service roads render differently so anyone using the map visually will be less likely to use these roads. It's pushing the current definition of service road rather a lot, but if you consider a service road to be a road that should only be used to access locations connected to the service road, then it seems within the spirit of the definition. There's a specific issue with Chalford Hill at the moment. Road closures (due to collapsed retaining walls) mean that the popular routes to the valley (Old Neighbourhood and to a lesser extent Coppice Hill) are closed and likely to remain so for over a month. My local source (a parish councilor) says that most locals are using a long diversion and avoiding Dark Lane. (Traffic on Dark Lane has increased, and there was recently a fist fight when two cars met and neither driver would reverse. Locals want to make it temporarily one way, which would massively increase its usefulness, but there's no quick way of doing this.) My two questions: 1) Should OSM data discourage use of routes that locals - who are likely to be better than outsiders at coping with narrow lanes - avoid as too problematic; 2) Is tagging usable but 'Unfit for motors' roads as service roads an acceptable way of doing this or is there a better method (that is recognised by current renderers and routing engines). As my opinion on (1) is yes, I've tagged Dark Lane and a couple of even more difficult roads as service roads, at least for the duration of the road closures, but will happily revert the tag if there's a better way. Rob ___ Talk-GB mailing list Talk-GB@openstreetmap.org mailto:Talk-GB@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-gb ___ Talk-GB mailing list Talk-GB@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-gb
Re: [Talk-GB] Unfit for motors - tagging for routing
On 10 December 2012 15:11, Gregory Williams greg...@gregorywilliams.me.uk wrote: I think that changing the class of the road to service isn’t the best way of recording the data. These roads will quite often legally be an unclassified highway and changing the class away from that just isn’t accurate. Although I'd agree with your general point, it should be noted that there are also routes which are physically farm tracks that are technically unclassified highways. Many of the routes shown on OS maps as Other Route with Public Access will fall into this category. Some of these routes may have a reasonable surface, others will be terrible and only suitable for very rugged 4x4s. I think most people would agree that it would be rather silly to use highway=unclassified highway for these rural tracks that definitely don't look like normal roads. Instead I've used highway=track based on the physical appearance, and then added designation=unclassified_highway to record the legal classification. While it's certainly less clear-cut what to do for routes which are surfaced and appear to be normal roads (albeit rather narrow) the same technique could be used. Using highway=service + designation=unclassified_highway might be a useful way to tag these. I also like the idea of using motor_vehicle=unsuitable. If we are to use this, it would be good to document it in the wiki. Presumably it corresponds to legally yes you can, but in reality you'd be advised not to try. (If this isn't the case, then we could probably do with another access value that does express this.) Robert. -- Robert Whittaker ___ Talk-GB mailing list Talk-GB@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-gb
Re: [Talk-GB] Unfit for motors - tagging for routing
Robert Whittaker (OSM) wrote: Instead I've used highway=track based on the physical appearance, and then added designation= unclassified_highway to record the legal classification. Agreed: I often do something similar. In this case, though, I'm not entirely comfortable with highway=service as a tag, because there's no consensus that highway=service implies a right of through-passage for (among others) cyclists, pedestrians etc. A routing engine would not be off-beam to interpret it as access=destination; so it may well be the case that, by fixing routing for cars, it's breaking it for other users. As ever, we tag what's on the ground. In this case, there's a sign advising Unsuitable for motors. So rather than motor_vehicle=unsuitable, which implies a value judgement on OSM's part (we say this is unsuitable), we could perhaps use the subtly different motor_vehicle=not_advised (with source:motor_vehicle=signage for the truly pernickety), or something like that. It's all a bit angels-on-a-pin until any routing clients actually take note of the tags, of course, but it's certainly an issue worth considering. cheers Richard -- View this message in context: http://gis.19327.n5.nabble.com/Unfit-for-motors-tagging-for-routing-tp5739827p5739879.html Sent from the Great Britain mailing list archive at Nabble.com. ___ Talk-GB mailing list Talk-GB@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-gb
