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> Am 07.08.2015 um 09:50 schrieb John Willis <jo...@mac.com>:
> 
> And their rules on =trunk through =secondary definitions are different than 
> most other countries mapped in OSM because they follow Japanese mapping 
> convention where the legal name /shield designation of the road


what is this legal name/ shield designation about, the relative importance of 
the highway as a connection in the road network? Or something else like who 
maintains the road (typically more politics and history than traffic logics)? 


> is the *only* information for determining which kind of road it is tagged as 
> - 1.5 lane "primary" road a hundred years old next to a 4 lane "tertiary" 
> bypass built 10 years ago to go around the narrow primary is common.


being an island, it won't bother people outside Japan, but it sounds neither  
reasonable, nor beneficial for anyone, and it is clearly contradicting the 
documentation and the community consensus globally - will result likely in 
routing problems like suboptimal routes and increased computation time.

IMHO it is probably a sign of immature mapping that will be solved by the time 
when people acknowledge the problems it creates. Adopting some arbitrary 
national classification (usually there are several systems and classes for 
roads used by the public entities for planning, designing, construction and 
maintenance, but the system the mappers "choose" is always the signposted refs) 
is the simplest way of mapping that doesn't require further thinking or 
interpretation and avoids discussions. It is therefore often used in the 
beginning of mapping when people are shy of making decisions.

Be bold, analyze the situation and go by common sense: if you know an area, it 
is not so difficult to create/recognize a road hierarchy (unless you're in 
Tokyo maybe). Then start applying your findings and iterate in the following 
time until you come to some sort of more stable consensus. It's worth it.

cheers 
Martin
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