Briley Parkway, in Nashville, Tennessee, USA is a ring-road about seven miles 
out from the center of the city.  Portions of it were purpose-built, while 
other sections involved connecting together existing streets.  As a result, 
some portions of it are freeway-grade, with grade separation, no traffic 
signals, high speed limits; some portions are parkway-grade, with some traffic 
signals and moderate speed limits; and some portions are ordinary residential 
streets, with driveways opening directly into Briley Parkway, traffic signals, 
and, in one several-mile-long portion, only one lane of traffic in each 
direction, and no shoulder to pull onto in case of a breakdown.  No one 
classification will fit all of Briley Parkway.  I am sure that there are other 
such mixed-classification roads in other cities.

-------Original Email-------
Subject :Re: [Tagging] RFC on two proposals: Motorway indication;Expressway     
indication
>From  :mailto:vidthe...@gmail.com
Date  :Fri Jul 16 16:27:56 America/Chicago 2010


On Fri, Jul 16, 2010 at 4:55 PM, Anthony <o...@inbox.org> wrote:
> On Fri, Jul 16, 2010 at 4:39 PM, David ``Smith'' <vidthe...@gmail.com>
> wrote:
>>
>> Add to that
>> grade_separated=* and you would indeed describe what is physically a
>> freeway/motorway.
>
> What's the point of grade_separated=*?  I thought that was covered by
> bridge/tunnel=yes and the lack of sharing of nodes at the point where two
> roads cross.

Technically you're right.  But practically, grade_separated=* offers a
/summary/ characteristic about the linear road.  A nice map will
display the difference between freeways (entirely grade-separated) and
expressways (partially or not at all grade-separated) by choosing
different line styles for each.  The line style is applied along a
linear path, whereas your suggested test (sharing of nodes or lack
thereof) only provides results at discreet points along the road.
That information can, theoretically, be then applied to the length of
the road by a kind of "nearest-determination" method, or by a
less-sophisticated per-way AND operation; but then on roads that have
partial grade separation — many expressways — you'd have a weird
dash-dot alternation between freeway and expressway classification.  A
useful map should only mark a road as a freeway where it consistently
has grade separation from every crossroad.  Not to mention, the test
you suggested would have to be performed by every application that
wants to know whether the road is (in summary) grade-separated or not;
in the case of renderers, if this analysis is implemented at all, the
mediocre result would almost certainly be generated as a kind of
pseudo-tag anyway.  We might as well just tag it from the start, using
human judgement.

-- 
David "Smith"
a.k.a. Vid the Kid
a.k.a. Bír'd'in

Does this font make me look fat?

_______________________________________________
Tagging mailing list
Tagging@openstreetmap.org
http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/tagging

-- 
John F. Eldredge -- j...@jfeldredge.com
"Reserve your right to think, for even to think wrongly is better than not to 
think at all." -- Hypatia of Alexandria
_______________________________________________
Tagging mailing list
Tagging@openstreetmap.org
http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/tagging

Reply via email to