OpenStreetMap

[Hot Rod Hootenanny]

What are the "green" highways (lines) supposed to represent?

[route56]

What are the "green" highways (lines) supposed to represent?

They are roadways designated as "trunk roads." As pointed out, the roadway classification is british oriented rather than US. As I mentioned above, any highway that I designate as "trunk" in Kansas will be a controlled access facility with flat junctions. YMMV with other OSM users.

[jjakucyk]

To expand on what route56 said, it's basically an expressway.  Controlled access, maybe some grade separated interchanges, but can have at-grade intersections too.  It's higher than a surface arterial, but it's not a full-on interstate highway either.  Rural divided highways with at-grade intersections would apply as well. 

[realjd]

In Florida at least, in my mind a good and easy differentiator between red primary highways and green trunk highways would be speed limit. Divided highways with speed limit 65 are usually fast, have minimal at-grade intersections, and no driveways. Compare to divided highways with a speed limit of 55 which aren't necessarily like that.

Looking around the rest of the state, that mostly (but not always) holds. It seems like most 65 mph roads are marked green, but some slower, non-controlled access roads are also marked green.

[NE2]

To expand on what route56 said, it's basically an expressway.  Controlled access, maybe some grade separated interchanges, but can have at-grade intersections too.  It's higher than a surface arterial, but it's not a full-on interstate highway either.  Rural divided highways with at-grade intersections would apply as well. 

It's also used for major intercity highways that haven't (yet) been expresswayed.

[rickmastfan67]

To expand on what route56 said, it's basically an expressway.  Controlled access, maybe some grade separated interchanges, but can have at-grade intersections too.  It's higher than a surface arterial, but it's not a full-on interstate highway either.  Rural divided highways with at-grade intersections would apply as well. 

It's also used for major intercity highways that haven't (yet) been expresswayed.

That's what I've put McKnight Rd (US-19 Truck) as up here in Pittsburgh as trunk.  While it does have the segment between it's two Babcock Blvd intersections that might be "primary", it's going to stay as trunk because the last thing is that we need people to be directed to Perry Hwy.  Especially because of that wicked U-Turn curve in West View.  North and South of both Babcock Blvd intersections, it's speeds are 50mph (North) and 45mph (South) with little to no business driveways.

[NE2]

In Florida at least, in my mind a good and easy differentiator between red primary highways and green trunk highways would be speed limit. Divided highways with speed limit 65 are usually fast, have minimal at-grade intersections, and no driveways. Compare to divided highways with a speed limit of 55 which aren't necessarily like that.

Looking around the rest of the state, that mostly (but not always) holds. It seems like most 65 mph roads are marked green, but some slower, non-controlled access roads are also marked green.

In Florida I generally used trunk for rural four-lanes and a few rural two-lanes that continue the four-lane corridors, except where paralleled by an Interstate (Florida has a nice number of four-lane U.S. Routes right next to Interstates).
Post Merge: May 10, 2011, 05:35:11 PM

Motorway/Freeway is pretty obvious. I use KDOT maps as a reference (primary = major arterial, secondary = minor arterial, tertiary = collector). Those maps do not, however, distinguish rural expressways. That, unfortunately, still requires first-hand knowledge.

If you're going to tag based on HFCS, please use the HFCS=* tag so the functional classification information will remain even if someone changes some of the OSM classifications.

[NE2]

Just a note for mappers that (some?) 2010 NAIP aerials are now available via WMS: http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/National_Agriculture_Imagery_Program

[rickmastfan67]

Just a note for mappers that (some?) 2010 NAIP aerials are now available via WMS: http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/National_Agriculture_Imagery_Program

Nice.  Should make it a lot easier to use them when needed.

[route56]

If you're going to tag based on HFCS, please use the HFCS=* tag so the functional classification information will remain even if someone changes some of the OSM classifications.

Got it.

Now, How do I tell people that the legal name of a road is "E 1000" and NOT "East 1000"

[NE2]

Now, How do I tell people that the legal name of a road is "E 1000" and NOT "East 1000"

If the E is short for East, it should be expanded: http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Key:name#Abbreviation_.28don.27t_do_it.29 Otherwise smack the bot operator upside the head if he's expanding stuff incorrectly like E Street to East Street.

[rickmastfan67]

Now, How do I tell people that the legal name of a road is "E 1000" and NOT "East 1000"

You could add a "note=*" tag if necessary to let people know that the "E" doesn't mean "East" if you wanted to.

[rickmastfan67]

I did a lot of work on OSM for the Cincinnati area, and have generally been pleased with the results.  One thing that's tripped me up though is that rendering gets messed up with multi-level interchanges of different road classifications.  Once bridges are involved, the renderer seems to only use the road classification to base the draw order, and it ignores any specific layer settings.  For instance, in the following view, Columbia Parkway (trunk) renders below the various I-71 and I-471 (motorway) ramps, even though Columbia Parkway is on layer 5 and the ramps are on layers 1 or 2.  I haven't looked into it for a while, but I think there is an outstanding bug ticket, though nobody seems to care much about it.  Nevertheless, that's the one thing that really bugs me.

http://www.openstreetmap.org/?lat=39.10417&lon=-84.50186&zoom=17&layers=M

jjakucyk, you might want to take a look now.   They have finally fixed this bug in Mapnik this weekend!!

Here's an area in Pittsburgh that had the same *rendering* problem, but has been fixed.
http://www.openstreetmap.org/?lat=40.4424&lon=-79.99224&zoom=17&layers=M
(But not all zoom levels have been updated yet.  Zoom out and you'll see what I mean. )

[NE2]

Whoa. Awesome.

Now to get long refs rendered...

[rickmastfan67]

Whoa. Awesome.

Now to get long refs rendered...

Yep, it is awesome.  It took them long enough to deal with it. haha.
[r26009]

I also agree about those long refs too.  How goes your "offline" test of a possible fix for that?

[NE2]

The George Washington Bridge bus station roadways (highway=service) are finally drawn on top

I gave up with trying to get long refs working when I realized each rounded rectangle shield background is a separate image (so multiline refs would need a bunch more images for each color).

[jjakucyk]

Great that they finally fixed the layering bug.  Now if I could only fix problems on Google Maps as easily. 

[route56]

I've been using the HFCS tags of Major Arterial (Rural), Major Arterial (Urban), Minor Arterial (Rural), Minor Arterial (Urban), Major Collector, Minor Collector, and Urban Collector. I've been re-working OSM classification based on the suggested HFCS to OSM tag suggestions on this page:

http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Highway_Functional_Classification_System

Basically:
Trunk = Major Arterial (Rural)
Primary = Major Arterial (Urban), Minor Arterial (Rural)
Secondary = Minor Arterial (Urban), Major Collector
Tertiary = Urban Collector, Minor Collector
Any segment that's fully controlled access (e.g., three interchanges with no "flat" junctions between them) will get the "motorway" tag regardless of HFCS.

There's still a little play in the system, and there's a question of how to label a Major Arterial that goes straight through an urban area.

[WillWeaverRVA]

Given my problems with Google Map Maker, I'm probably going to try to participate in this project instead. The people involved seem to know what they're doing...

[rickmastfan67]

The people involved seem to know what they're doing...

hehe.  Yeah.  Google's way will just lead to more problems and their data going down the tank.

[mightyace]

Now, if I could only find an app for my droid that would use OSM instead of Google.

[NE2]

I don't know how good these are, but http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Android lists a bunch.

[mightyace]

Thanks, I'll have to give them a look.

I didn't know there were so many.  Hopefully at least ONE will work for me. 

[Dr Frankenstein]

Am I the only one who's unable to save right now? I have the message "Failure when uploading data", and my network sniffer tells me that the server returns a "400 Bad request" when creating the changeset.

[NE2]

Works fine for me.