Re: [Talk-us] SPAM-LOW: Re: Rural US: Correcting Original TIGER Imported Ways

[Kevin Broderick]

On Mon, Feb 12, 2018 at 6:23 PM, Brian May  wrote:

> ...
>


> Many times, a residential street having no name is a strong tip as well
> that it is not a residential street.
>
> Kevin, I hear where you are coming from, but I think your case is somewhat
> unique. Most people aren't going to look at a GPS with OSM data in it, see
> a bunch of residential roads in a rural un-populated area and think, OK,
> that must be unedited TIGER, but I know there's a few navigable roads in
> there somewhere, I just need to find them, record what I found and make
> some OSM edits. If they know the area, they are going to think this data is
> junk. If they don't know the area and they head into it they will then
> figure out pretty quickly the data is junk. I agree with others that these
> roads should probably not be in OSM at all - let the locals add the real
> roads and tracks. But we are living with the old TIGER, and there is some
> potential usefulness that can come from it. So as others have said, we are
> willing to leave them there, downgrade them to track without a grade
> assigned for now, maybe make some spatial corrections, delete roads that
> are obviously pure fantasy, etc.
>
> I don't think there should be any requirement to cover a certain size area
> when reviewing these areas. We need to be thankful that someone has taken
> the time to look at even a small area of rural areas that don't get much
> attention normally at all, especially private lands.
>

Perhaps I'm even weirder than I realized ;).

I know that I'm not the *only* one, and yes, it's more of a recognizing
bunk data then actually saying, "oh, that's got to be uncorrected TIGER"; I
could recognize areas of questionable data on my Garmin well before I got
involved in OSM and even knew what TIGER was, and as you noted, "Turn left
on Unnamed Road" was one of the warning signs that the route was likely to
be interesting (others being minor roads that allegedly go arrow-straight
in Vermont for more than half a mile, roads in minimally populated areas
that show as higher-grade than the main road connecting two hamlets, etc.).

>From what I've seen in both Montana and Vermont, the uncorrected TIGER data
generally bears a strong resemblance to *something* on the ground; it does
often include long driveways, some private roads, and occasionally paper
roads, but in the areas I'm familiar with, a TIGER road usually does have
some on-the-ground counterpart, even if many of them are not
sedan-friendly. For a lot of reasons, Vermont has very little questionable
TIGER left, Montana has a lot more, and I do agree that anyone who can pick
away at it is a good thing. I'd still suggest that, whenever possible,
modifying a localized road network in one swoop (and thus removing some of
the clues that weirdos like me would see as evidence of a good place to
explore and a bad shortcut if pressed for time) is helpful and probably
less likely to confuse routing engines.

-- 
Kevin Broderick
k...@kevinbroderick.com
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Re: [Talk-us] SPAM-LOW: Re: Rural US: Correcting Original TIGER Imported Ways

[Paul Johnson]

On Feb 12, 2018 19:24, "Brian May"  wrote:

Kevin, I hear where you are coming from, but I think your case is somewhat
unique. Most people aren't going to look at a GPS with OSM data in it, see
a bunch of residential roads in a rural un-populated area and think, OK,
that must be unedited TIGER, but I know there's a few navigable roads in
there somewhere, I just need to find them, record what I found and make
some OSM edits. If they know the area, they are going to think this data is
junk. If they don't know the area and they head into it they will then
figure out pretty quickly the data is junk.


Hindsight being 20/20, it would have been nice if we had picked
highway=road as the catchall.
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Re: [Talk-us] SPAM-LOW: Re: Rural US: Correcting Original TIGER Imported Ways

[Dave Swarthout]

I do a lot of mapping in Alaska and the quality of the Tiger roads in rural
Alaska is simply horrendous. For some of the small communities I've worked
on the Tiger ways are so far out of position I simply delete them and start
fresh. There is no way to know where they should actually be. The main
reason to keep them and why I sometimes make a guess about their positions
is to preserve the street names. I'm never going to be able to visit these
tiny communities because they are remote and exceedingly difficult to
reach. Nobody can ever drive to them, there will probably never be any
OSMers living in a town like Alakanuk, for example, nor is any resident
likely to use the OSM data but it looks exceedingly bad to leave those ways
as they are. So I often try to fix them. It's a tedious job at best. Along
with that, there are the ugly coastlines to fix everywhere as well. Take a
look at Alakanuk here (62.684314, -164.652965) to get an idea of what
Alaska OSM mappers are up against.

Anyway, my point is that most Tiger data I've encountered is so bad I wish
it wasn't there at all. I would rather sketch in the roads (roads that I
and 99.% of data consumers will never see or use), and toss the Tiger
data completely. In my example town, I can make a reasonable guess about
the position of the roads but it's a ton of work, especially when you
realize that _all_ of Alaska's rural towns have data like this or, more
often, worse.

On Tue, Feb 13, 2018 at 8:23 AM, Brian May  wrote:

> I have spent a very large amount of time cleaning up TIGER in rural areas
> of Florida. I agree with others that the vast majority of untouched TIGER
> ways in un-populated rural areas classified as residential are forest roads
> for logging trucks at best and pure fantasy at worst, with tons of barely
> grass paths all over the place. Many of these roads are on private lands
> that you can't (or shouldn't) access anyway. Spatially accuracy is often
> horrific. I've reviewed a decent amount of 2017 TIGER and many areas have
> not been fixed. The best secondary source of data I have found are county
> streets from the county GIS departments, but those vary widely in quality.
> At the very least the county data shows you where all the forest tracks,
> farms tracks and imaginary TIGER streets are, because they are not there in
> the county data sets. Many times, a residential street having no name is a
> strong tip as well that it is not a residential street.
>
> Kevin, I hear where you are coming from, but I think your case is somewhat
> unique. Most people aren't going to look at a GPS with OSM data in it, see
> a bunch of residential roads in a rural un-populated area and think, OK,
> that must be unedited TIGER, but I know there's a few navigable roads in
> there somewhere, I just need to find them, record what I found and make
> some OSM edits. If they know the area, they are going to think this data is
> junk. If they don't know the area and they head into it they will then
> figure out pretty quickly the data is junk. I agree with others that these
> roads should probably not be in OSM at all - let the locals add the real
> roads and tracks. But we are living with the old TIGER, and there is some
> potential usefulness that can come from it. So as others have said, we are
> willing to leave them there, downgrade them to track without a grade
> assigned for now, maybe make some spatial corrections, delete roads that
> are obviously pure fantasy, etc.
>
> I don't think there should be any requirement to cover a certain size area
> when reviewing these areas. We need to be thankful that someone has taken
> the time to look at even a small area of rural areas that don't get much
> attention normally at all, especially private lands.
>
> Brian
>
> On 2/12/2018 6:02 PM, Kevin Broderick wrote:
>
> If you can cover an entire area (which I'd define as a swath between the
> nearest state highways), I agree that downgrading to track absent other
> clues is one reasonable solution. One of my key points is that anyone who's
> spent a fair bit of time trying to use GPS maps (of any origin) in
> poorly-mapped areas will quickly recognize an area that is clearly an
> unverified TIGER import, which signals both (a) that the data is clearly
> questionable and (b) that it might be an interesting place to explore to
> find out if the roads do go through or not. The questionable map data can
> be very useful, especially in conjunction with other data sources, in
> attempting to piece together a route through an area that lacks fully
> maintained roadways. If a track doesn't actually exist, yes, then it should
> certainly be deleted, but I've ridden right-of-ways that were damn near
> impossible to see with leaf-on imagery and also found other routes that
> looked more road-like via the same imagery impassable, so I definitely
> wouldn't delete anything unless you can get there in person and look for
> evidence of a roadway, perhaps one that hasn't been 

Re: [Talk-us] SPAM-LOW: Re: Rural US: Correcting Original TIGER Imported Ways

[Brian May]

I have spent a very large amount of time cleaning up TIGER in rural 
areas of Florida. I agree with others that the vast majority of 
untouched TIGER ways in un-populated rural areas classified as 
residential are forest roads for logging trucks at best and pure fantasy 
at worst, with tons of barely grass paths all over the place. Many of 
these roads are on private lands that you can't (or shouldn't) access 
anyway. Spatially accuracy is often horrific. I've reviewed a decent 
amount of 2017 TIGER and many areas have not been fixed. The best 
secondary source of data I have found are county streets from the county 
GIS departments, but those vary widely in quality. At the very least the 
county data shows you where all the forest tracks, farms tracks and 
imaginary TIGER streets are, because they are not there in the county 
data sets. Many times, a residential street having no name is a strong 
tip as well that it is not a residential street.


Kevin, I hear where you are coming from, but I think your case is 
somewhat unique. Most people aren't going to look at a GPS with OSM data 
in it, see a bunch of residential roads in a rural un-populated area and 
think, OK, that must be unedited TIGER, but I know there's a few 
navigable roads in there somewhere, I just need to find them, record 
what I found and make some OSM edits. If they know the area, they are 
going to think this data is junk. If they don't know the area and they 
head into it they will then figure out pretty quickly the data is junk. 
I agree with others that these roads should probably not be in OSM at 
all - let the locals add the real roads and tracks. But we are living 
with the old TIGER, and there is some potential usefulness that can come 
from it. So as others have said, we are willing to leave them there, 
downgrade them to track without a grade assigned for now, maybe make 
some spatial corrections, delete roads that are obviously pure fantasy, 
etc.


I don't think there should be any requirement to cover a certain size 
area when reviewing these areas. We need to be thankful that someone has 
taken the time to look at even a small area of rural areas that don't 
get much attention normally at all, especially private lands.


Brian

On 2/12/2018 6:02 PM, Kevin Broderick wrote:
If you can cover an entire area (which I'd define as a swath between 
the nearest state highways), I agree that downgrading to track absent 
other clues is one reasonable solution. One of my key points is that 
anyone who's spent a fair bit of time trying to use GPS maps (of any 
origin) in poorly-mapped areas will quickly recognize an area that is 
clearly an unverified TIGER import, which signals both (a) that the 
data is clearly questionable and (b) that it might be an interesting 
place to explore to find out if the roads do go through or not. The 
questionable map data can be very useful, especially in conjunction 
with other data sources, in attempting to piece together a route 
through an area that lacks fully maintained roadways. If a track 
doesn't actually exist, yes, then it should certainly be deleted, but 
I've ridden right-of-ways that were damn near impossible to see with 
leaf-on imagery and also found other routes that looked more road-like 
via the same imagery impassable, so I definitely wouldn't delete 
anything unless you can get there in person and look for evidence of a 
roadway, perhaps one that hasn't been maintained in decades (e.g. 
Class IV roads in Vermont and Class VI roads in New Hampshire).


Downgrading some ways to tracks without doing so to a whole localized 
network creates the appearance of a higher level of data accuracy than 
actually exists, which IMO is more likely to bite someone in the ass 
than having a localized network of roads that are mislabeled. I know 
it would make some of the exploring I've done via on/off-road 
motorcycle more difficult.


I'd also suggest that leaving tiger:reviewed at no is appropriate if 
you haven't been able to travel the road/track in question and 
determine whether it is really an unclassified road or a track, so it 
remains flagged for further review if someone has the time and 
proximity to do so.


On Mon, Feb 12, 2018 at 3:39 PM, Martijn van Exel > wrote:


I am very happy to see this rekindled interest in TIGER cleanup!

Having done a fair amount of backcountry exploring, I know that
there is a wide range of road grades and aerial imagery alone is
not enough to decide how navigable a roads is for a particular
type of vehicle. Or, for that matter, what its access limitations
are. I do agree with Clifford that leaving them as poorly aligned
'residential' roads is the worst possible situation. Yes, worse
than deleting the road altogether. What I usually do is mark the
road as track without a track grade tag. This seems to me to be
the most acceptable generic solution for a remote mapper:
acknowledging that som