Thanks Andy, that provides some useful context. As others have also pointed out new data is generally good for OSM and we can't expect all users to ever get all the tags right on a first pass. I'll be keeping a closer eye in my area and will make direct contact with mappers who seem to be routinely missing the important point. My biggest concern was your noted "adding connectivity where there isn't any public connectivity" point. It's almost impossible to see if a service road (especially private driveways) has any access rights without being on the ground and even then it might not say. Even a gps trace doesn’t confirm that there was permission to travel, just that they did. The question is whether it's better to have connectivity implied within the OSM database or to leave it out of OSM until you have a better understanding on the ground.
Cheers Andy -----Original Message----- From: ajt1...@gmail.com [mailto:ajt1...@gmail.com] Sent: 31 July 2019 15:53 To: talk-gb@openstreetmap.org Subject: Re: [Talk-GB] Amazon Logistics edits On 29/07/2019 09:35, Andy Robinson wrote: > I've just looked at a number of Amazon Logistics in my local area.... Just to give everyone a bit of a heads-up about the DWG's involvement here - we got a number of messages about Amazon's mapping. The biggest immediate problem was their use of "motor_vehicle=yes" on "highway=track" regardless of the actual legal access status. To cut a long story short, they have removed this where they've blanket added it, and have since asked exactly how to map sort of thing (at https://www.openstreetmap.org/user/jguthula/diary/390322 and elsewhere). The list of Amazon editors is quite long - https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Amazon_Logistics#Editors - and not all are active in the UK. I used overpass queries like https://overpass-turbo.eu/s/Lea to check the edits. With regard to the "motor_vehicle=yes" issue, I contacted each of the Amazon mappers active in the UK individually rather than going through a "manager" to try and get them talking to the local community. In order to get from edits there to changeset discussion comments, click on an object on that map, then on the changeset, then "changeset XML" and copy the "uid=" value and use it in a URL such as resultmaps.neis-one.org/osm-discussion-comments?uid=9310279 . One other issue that people have raised with these edits have been "adding connectivity where there isn't any public connectivity" (i.e. adding a "highway=service" or "highway=track" that is in reality a private farm track, that connects two public roads). Personally I wouldn't assume that either of these had public access in England and Wales* (Scotland has a different legal system), and I don't think that we can blame Amazon for adding missing geometry but only some missing tags. Local mappers will still be needed to add these. Amazon editors tend to have their own "local area" so a variation of the overpass query above can be used to identify newly added objects - I'm sure that some people will be able to use local knowledge to say "well obviously way XYZ should be access=private" and similar. While looking at these issues I did notice quite a few other tracks and rural service roads (driveways etc.) where the access tags looked a bit unlikely - and there are of course many examples were designations haven't been added (where that isn't open data, that needs survey). I notice that someone from the National Trust has written a diary entry https://www.openstreetmap.org/user/AJW92/diary/390378 to discuss how to tag England and Wales "rights of way" designations. Best Regards, Andy (from the DWG) * I'd suggest that it's also not correct to tag "access=private" on newly traced farm etc. tracks - if the example above https://www.openstreetmap.org/way/120277748 is a "byway open to all traffic" then access=yes or motor_vehicle=yes on there will be correct, and "private" would be wrong (TROs notwithstanding). _______________________________________________ Talk-GB mailing list Talk-GB@openstreetmap.org https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-gb _______________________________________________ Talk-GB mailing list Talk-GB@openstreetmap.org https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-gb
