On 30/08/2010 21:48, Pieren wrote:
And if you go ahead with this article:
"When boxes or pipes are placed side-by-side to create a width of
greater than twenty feet, the culvert is defined as a bridge in the
United States"
And if you go on reading it says " This is a requirement of the federal
bridge inspection standards and ensures that the culvert is inspected on
a regular basis^ <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Culvert#cite_note-0> ".
So in this case doesn't mean "is a bridge" but "the bit over the top is
defined legally as a bridge so that it has to be inspected to make sure
that it doesn't collapse in the same way that bridges have to be".
For info, Chambers (a paper dictionary - remember them?) defines it as
follows:
'culvert, noun. an arched channel for carrying water beneath a road,
railway, etc. [Perhaps from French "couler" to flow - Latin "colare".]'
Naturally, this is a British English definition - it doesn't mean that
Americans using the word for "any part of the engineering used to send
water under and something else over" are wrong; they're just speaking a
different language to me. The use of British English (actually an
England-and-Wales only dialect as far as highway types go) in OSM is a
historical accident, but it's what we've got, and redefining tag use
based on another dialect or a mixture is likely to just cause a mess.
Personally I wouldn't object if someone started mapping man-made water
features in Dutch (they have more words for them) provided that it was
clear what they meant!
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