Ran into a tagging issue today while cleaning up a (complicated) area of Tokyo
I visited.
https://www.openstreetmap.org/node/3851821325
<https://www.openstreetmap.org/node/3851821325> Came across this
highway=motorway_junction node. Seemed in the wrong place.
Out in the Japanese countryside, the tollway exits usually have these
properties:
- a “junction" has an exit in both directions of the motorway (both the “down 下
“ and “ up 上 ” directions), so adding highway=motorway_junction to the two exit
nodes makes sense.
- these exits (usually) then meet at a common toll plaza between the motorway
and the main road network
- which lead to a common “entrance/exit” intersection(s) on the roads linking
to the tollway, which have labeled intersection signals (sometimes)
https://www.openstreetmap.org/#map=17/36.33227/139.10122
<https://www.openstreetmap.org/#map=17/36.33227/139.10122>
- more complicated entrance and exit ramps still lead to a common toll plaza,
so entering from one direction of travel or another on the normal road doesn’t
limit your direction of travel on the motorway.
https://www.openstreetmap.org/#map=16/36.3511/139.2196
<https://www.openstreetmap.org/#map=16/36.3511/139.2196>
So how to enter the tollway seems obvious, but now there are more and more
complicated entrance/exit schemes popping up, especially with "automated toll
collection" exits and entrances around service areas and tunnels, like my
questionable node is for.
having an entrance-exit that only serves one direction of the tollway in rural
areas has led to many “wrong way” drivers on the tollway. I have personally
seen two in the same spot near a one-sided junction. They assume an entrance
feeds both directions (as is common), and go backwards up the exit ramp after
the automated toll gates. This has led to a TON of signage and arrows and other
visual cues being installed on every motorway in the last year or so - because
of the rapid increase of separated entrances and exits making more and more
wrong-way drivers. The offending junction pair in my area:
https://www.openstreetmap.org/#map=17/36.30869/139.09130
<https://www.openstreetmap.org/#map=17/36.30869/139.09130> note, like the US,
direction of travel means different exits and entrances, unlike Rural Japan
(and my above examples) where a single connection to the normal road network
allows access to either motorway direction, which is very common on the
hundreds of junctions outside of Tokyo.
This idea of tagging just the “exits” doesn’t help when:
- the entrances are separated or have different access roads from the exits.
So, so much signage is dedicated to finding entrances in complicated road
networks - not tagging entrances seems to go against that.
- the “entrance” is so far away from the exit that the label for the exit node
is not useful as an implied indicator that there is an entrance there too. It’s
not useful to imply an entrance in general, since there might not be one (such
as the offending node’s Southbound junction is exit-only).
This particular node marks an entrance that is very very difficult to return
to, so it caused me a big headache when I missed it a few months ago.
https://www.openstreetmap.org/node/773008249
<https://www.openstreetmap.org/node/773008249>. I thought I had a hundred more
meters until the entrance.
- there is no exit node, just an entrance node, therefore the node label on the
motorway itself can be hundreds of meters away from where the motorway_link
begins, leading to missing the entrance (when used as a visual map), or, if I
am understanding the wiki, shouldn’t be tagged at all.
- The road network is so complicated, the junction labels overalap the entire
rendered motorway, which visually implies there is an exit in a direction with
no exit. (as in my node’s case, causing this email).
so:
- is highway=motorway_junction just for exits? it’s wiki page seems to
imply/state it. Where is the corresponding motorway_entrance then when it is
just an entrance? do we not need them?
- if the junction is only an entrance in one direction of travel, wouldn’t the
highway=motorway_junction be more useful on the node where the link meets the
normal road network (where the driver has to make a no-way-back decision), or
is that not needed?
A user in the discussion page also had a good point - the motorway_link (both
exit and entrance) roads often have multiple connections, names, refs, exit_to,
etc values, but the wiki page implies that getting this information onto the
link way or node is not necessary for entrances. What is best?
http://www.openstreetmap.org/#map=17/35.29627/138.94919
<http://www.openstreetmap.org/#map=17/35.29627/138.94919> the Gotemba exit (
Motorway_junction Ref=7) near Mt Fuji has “gate 1” and “gate 2” with their own
entrance and exit links to handle traffic going in different tourist spots, and
labeling them correctly would be nice, as it is weird.
http://www.openstreetmap.org/#map=17/35.29627/138.94919
<http://www.openstreetmap.org/#map=17/35.29627/138.94919>
Suggestion:
would something like entrance_to= or highway=motorway_entrance be a good tag?
we should be able to tag, somehow, that this is a labeled and signed entrance
for the tollway, and what motorway direction(s) it serves without relying on
the name field (if I understand this correctly). A widening mouth/triangle head
pointing onto the motorway / triangle tip ointed off the motorway might be a
good rendering idea for the different entrance/exit ways (or something else
visual) if words are not rendered.Something to render the entrances and exit
junction labels differently, at least having junction entrances rendered only
at a high zoom, while leaving the junction labels as they are now at low zoom
to label the road network.
Trying to stuff all this meaning into the name or ref for the entrance/exit
motorway_link seems kinda haphazard, compared to the tagging options available
to much less important details. Adding motoway_entrance (and maybe motorway
exit) may help label and define these complex motorway_link road node
intersections, or some other scheme to add this to the motoway_link ways
themselves.
Javbw
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