Proposal:Highway key voting importance

Picture from Wikimedia Commons, taken by Jawed Karim, licensed cc-by-sa 3.0

Summary

In short the general definition of highway=* should be changed to importance for the road grid (hierarchical position in the interconnecting network) instead of physical attributes.

Longer Version

After continuous discussions on talk and talk-de about the general meaning of the Key highway=*, it was agreed, that the definition pasted onto the wiki in 2007, without discussion on the mailing lists (the main channel of communication within OSM), did not reflect the actual meaning of the key and is posing a lot of problems, especially in the context of a world-map.

Therefore the page was changed after discussions to reflect the common practise better and achieve a more generic definition appliable in all contexts.

In short the definition of highway=* should be changed to importance for the road grid/network instead of physical attributes. This does not mean not to tag physical attributes, they are very important for a lot of reasons. Therefore the proposed changes also include references to the most important physical attributes to add: lanes=*, surface=*, width=*.

Reasoning

This voting is set up because each of the members of the OSM 'family' deeply respects the opinions of her/his colleagues and so wouldn't want to make major changes to one of the most-used keys - especially changes that have proved controversial - without going through as 'democratic' and open a process as possible. For details see: [[1]]

The changes were following a discussion announced here: http://lists.openstreetmap.org/pipermail/talk/2009-July/039211.html (please see followups to keep track, continued also here: http://lists.openstreetmap.org/pipermail/talk/2009-August/039444.html )

Changes in detail

http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/index.php?title=Key%3Ahighway&diff=316036&oldid=315699

Discussion

please use the mailing lists and the discussion page

Fuck the shit mailing list and post in the OSM Forum http://forum.openstreetmap.org/index.php

Voting

The voting is opened. End of voting: 30.09.2009 Vote with {{vote|yes/no}} ~~~~ or using the text that best describes your vote if yes/no are not applicable

• Yes This approach is already taken in Russia for quite long time. --Glebius 14:58, 16 September 2009 (UTC)
• Yes. Its already like that in Norway after discussions on the norwegian mailing-list. Gorm 00:16, 2 September 2009 (UTC)
• Yes to classifying roads by importance, no to the idea that this page should be needed after the mailing list discussion. --Wynndale 16:43, 27 August 2009 (UTC)
• Yes we already do this in Sweden. Norpan 17:12, 27 August 2009 (UTC)
• Yes to classifying roads by importance, see discussion page. --HeikoE 19:18, 27 August 2009 (UTC)
• Yes because it is already practised in Germany and many other countries. --FK270673 20:48, 27 August 2009 (UTC)
• Yes because it doesn't matter. An attempt to define the highway tag in one sentence, which applies from Germany to Nigeria, is an epic fail anyway. --Bass 22:17, 27 August 2009 (UTC)
• Yes this is the best approach. Apo42 00:52, 28 August 2009 (UTC)
• No to change the general description, yes to improve the list of international equivalents (national definitions). --Skippern 00:49, 28 August 2009 (UTC)
• Yes to classifying roads by importance, no to giving up on the special meanings for motorway, living_street, track, etc. --Muir 03:24, 28 August 2009 [UTC]
• Yes to importance at least for trunk, primary, secondary, tertiary. (I don't know if this vote would ever count, but I'm putting it down here as a record of my preference.) --seav 04:59, 28 August 2009 (UTC)
• Yes to importance for trunk, primary, secondary, tertiary only, because these tags are so vague they are unlikely to be able to adequately describe the physical state of anything; yes to improve the list of regional equivalencies; and yes to greater emphasis on the physical/verifiable tags: lanes/surface/width/maxspeed/etc. --Waldo000000 06:16, 28 August 2009 (UTC)

The importance is generally defined by some local or national authority/government. Smsm1 07:48, 28 August 2009 (UTC)

• Yes and No I disagree with the need, at this stage, of this vote. I agree that it is rather unclear the meaning of trunk/primary/secondary/tertiary outside U.K., but we shoud clarify and agree, at internatonal level, how to define the "importance" of a road and then the rules to apply for the road tagging decision. The importance of a road should not be the feeling of a single person. This discussion should be done before the vote and the discussion should involve as many mappers as possible. --GPS-Marco. 28 August 2009 (UTC)
• Yes highway=* has always been about the importance of the road, and never about anything physical. --Hawke 12:27, 28 August 2009 (UTC)
• No The Highway tags match the road classification scheme in the UK. It fits there. In other country it does not fit and has been used differently. That is ok. But it is stupid to bring this back into the UK and change the original meaning. And yes to the necessity of a general discussion before changing something this basic. --Nop 12:38, 28 August 2009 (UTC)
• Yes We already do this in Italy, at least for primary, secondary, tertiary, unclassified and residential--Stemby 11:28, 29 August 2009 (UTC)
• Yes And is to clearly specify that importance is not necessarily correlated with administrative classification. We don't care about who pays to fill the holes in the asphalt. --Alessioz 16:37, 29 August 2009 (UTC)
• Yes --ilrobi 142:54, 29 August 2009 (UTC)
• No This change would invalidate existing data. Introduce new tagging scheme for importance. --Blaz 14:23, 29 August 2009 (UTC)
• No This is so far-reaching a proposal that I do not believe that the existing mechamisms of "voting" via the wiki etc. suffice. There are very major implications for existing tagging. Also the existing scheme is well-matured and works well in the UK - and I would have thought the equivalence tables would make it work equally well in most countries. And the whole discussion seems really only to concern certain values of highway=*. As I understand it, even the proposer states that the changes don't really apply to values other than =trunk, =primary, =secondary, =tertiary, =unclassified and =residential. So would it not be better to discuss modifications to these tags (if necessary - personally I think not much) rather than to change the whole key. If there really is a high participation in the vote - and an outcome that it is not close to unanimous one way or the other then I would prefer to see a working party or expert group - as previously discussed in the talk pages. Mikh43 16:01, 29 August 2009 (UTC)
• Yes Only because it seems less wrong than physical. I think a short paragraph summing up the factors involved and then points people to International equivalence and a separate page with what to do if your country isn't on there would be best. --Pobice 16:49, 29 August 2009 (UTC)
• Yes The established highway tag does not adequately imply build quality, but does map rather well to many countries' hierarchy of road "importances". Physical characteristics of roads as well as usage restrictions (and even smoothness...) can be catered for very well by other tags most of which are already established. An importance-driven presentation of roads furthermore corresponds well to how most existing road maps present roads and allows users to more readily visualise a long-distance route. --Mackerski 22:29, 29 August 2009 (UTC)
• Yes --tosky 15:09, 30 August 2009 (UTC)
• Yes I don't think "physical" matches what people do (for trunk/primary/secondary/tertiary/unclassified), so the main page should indeed be rewritten around "importance", but with appropriate reference to the fact that physical is relevant for other values, and that actual usage in each country is generally established in the international equivalence table. The main entry should set the scene, not try to give precise definitions of everything.--RichardMann 13:11, 2 September 2009 (UTC)
• Yes --Yuri Nazarov 08:25, 3 September 2009 (UTC)
• Yes --Ivan Komarov 08:54, 3 September 2009 (UTC)
• Yes --Aleksandr Dezhin 11:42, 3 September 2009 (UTC)
• Yes --Simone 14:25, 3 September 2009 (UTC)
• Yes --Diego.guidotti 16:38, 3 September 2009 (UTC)
• I veto this proposal -- Randomjunk 09:47, 4 September 2009 (UTC)
• Yes --Dieterdreist 07:42, 16 September 2009 (UTC)
• I approve this proposal. we already do this in Spain --PerroVerd 07:57, 16 September 2009 (UTC)
• Yes --D.s.e 08:08, 16 September 2009 (UTC)
• Yes xylome 08:11, 16 September 2009 (UTC)
• No: too unspecific an alternative. Ipofanes 08:13, 16 September 2009 (UTC)--
• Yes --Hanska 08:14, 16 September 2009 (UTC)
• No I agree with Mikh43 -- Gustavf 08:21, 16 September 2009 (UTC)
• Yes Snusmumriken 08:29, 16 September 2009 (UTC)
• Yes DaveFX 08:36, 16 September 2009 (UTC)
• No. This will invalidate a lot of existing data and the meaning of value under the new definition doesn't seem clear. In addition we have clearly defined motorways, trunk, primary and secondary in the UK which will be lost. I could support a new key to achieve this objective either via say "Importance" (to define importance) or "LegalDef" (to take over from highway for roads with a certain legal status thereby freeing up Highway for this purpose). --MarkS 08:51, 16 September 2009 (UTC)

No-one is suggesting changing established country based classifications, also the distinction between trunk, primary, secondary and tertiary roads in the UK is already effectively based on importance. --Wynndale 11:38, 16 September 2009 (UTC)

I think a serious problem of both this proposal, and the existing text at the top of Key:highway, it that neither make this point clear. We actually use government classifications mostly -- Harry Wood 14:19, 16 September 2009 (UTC)

• Yes As long as there is no attempt to 'define' the importance of roads below secondary - they are all the same 'unclassified importance ( MarkS - NON of that is lost! ) Lsces 08:56, 16 September 2009 (UTC)
• Yes --Lafriks 09:00, 16 September 2009 (UTC)
• Yes --ck3d 09:27, 16 September 2009 (UTC)
• No: a definition should not encourage tagging to be subjective. We have in most countries the governmental classification as a better option and should put bias on that. --User:Roland.olbricht 09:27, 16 September 2009 (UTC)
• No --Coax 10:29, 16 September 2009 (UTC)
• No A definition of the highway key must be valid for all values, not just primary ... unclassified. -- Cjw 11:03, 16 September 2009 (UTC)
• Yes But we do need the governmental hierarchy in a separate key and not only in the ref=*-key, e.g. roadclass=* analogue to admin_level=*. This value could be added to all streets and should be the fallback if the physical or connection importance is not tagged. --Vsandre 11:58, 16 September 2009 (UTC)
• Abstain - I like the picture :) --Thomas Wood 13:45, 16 September 2009 (UTC)
• I am going to ignore this proposal - Jonathan Bennett 13:48, 16 September 2009 (UTC)
• No I don't care what the importance of the road is. I care if I can drive vehicle X down it at speed Y. A per-country list of highway types that are tagged according to conventions and problems in that country is the logical way. This is an attempt to impose a global standard where one makes little sense. Tagging just so that routing engines or renderers don't have to look up per-country details is broken. --SpeedEvil 13:57, 16 September 2009 (UTC)
• I oppose this proposal. Socks 15:15, 16 September 2009 (UTC)
• I approve this proposal. -- Zkir 15:56, 16 September 2009 (UTC). The importance classification is quite clear and useful. Physical attributes should be tagged using surface=*, width=* etc.
• I approve this proposal. -- Shurik 17:59, 16 September 2009 (UTC). Classification of roads must reflect their difference. Lots of roads in Russia should be secondary or tertiary if we shall use their physical characteristics. Siberian important federal road "Lena" partially has surface=unpaved. Current classification rules give us big blanks on map with no roads, and we really have some roads in Russia that defined with next class than based on their characteristics (e.g. 500 km P132 that should be secondary and not primary, but really more important that many other nearest secondary roads).
• I approve this proposal. - importance fits the tagging needs of my country. Physical stuff have separated tags already Ivansanchez 18:28, 16 September 2009 (UTC)
• I approve this proposal. --Ksamples 18:35, 16 September 2009 (UTC). I'm a fan of the Highway Functional Classification System used in the US. And it seems general enough to be used worldwide.
• I approve this proposal. - Effectively it is already used like this in Spain. Juan Toledo 18:36, 16 September 2009 (UTC)
• I approve this proposal. Alpha de 20:43, 16 September 2009 (UTC)
• I approve this proposal. FedericoCozzi 21:00, 16 September 2009 (UTC)
• I approve this proposal. Smal dirt roads can be main highways in some cases and wide smooth roads can be unimportant residential or tertiary roads Gnonthgol 21:02, 16 September 2009 (UTC)
• Yes iiizio 23:21, 16 September 2009 (UTC)
• I oppose this proposal. Introduce new tags (like "highway priority") or at least new values. The words "motorway" "trunk" etc. used to classify importance will create misssunderstandings. A unsurfaced way (if it is important or not) can never be a motorway Hadhuey 21:31, 16 September 2009 (UTC)
• No --Edwin-ldbg 22:04, 16 September 2009 (UTC) Fucking Shit!!! Why do you not inform us in the OSM Forum about a "importance" voting? misfit egoist!