Talk:Namibian Tagging Standards

D Road classification

Could anyone please explain, why D-roads are tagged as secondary, while the official classification scheme say D roads are tertiary (secondary are C)??

Thanks

I think because OSM's "primary roads" are not the top-level roads. The classification starts with "trunk roads" as the most important roads (= "B roads" in Namibia) then "primary" (="C roads" in Namibia) etc. --Flip666 13:10, 22 April 2010 (UTC)

D roads should be tagged as secondary, simply because they are quite important and maps should be rendered accordingly. The main page, however, does say they should be tagged as secondary - so I would consider tertiary tags in the map to be an error. Jens 20:29, 28 April 2010 (UTC)

Street Names and References (name and ref tags)

It does not really make sense to repeat the reference number of a road in the name. A name should only be assigned if the road has a real name inside a village. E.g. in Swakopmund "Nathanael Maxuilili Street" for B2. Outside villages the name tag should be omitted. --Flip666 10:22, 24 April 2010 (UTC)

Hmmm.. I'm not so sure about that. Of course, if there is a proper name for a road (e.g. inside a town) this should be used. If, however, the street has at least a reference, that in my opinion is a very useful value for the name tag as well. Apart from being rendered nicely (using ref=), the name= might be useful (and may actually be used more often by tools) as a primary search key or value provider for a street index. Unless we need to save space (fat chance!), I would opt for keeping both fields. Jens 20:29, 28 April 2010 (UTC)

Maybe that depends on the renderer. With the standard renderer it does not look nice, e.g. look at this example near Windhoek: There are three oval green marks "B6" for the "ref" tag and one additional writing "in" the street for the "name" tag. "D1510" in the upper left looks even worse, the different writings almost together... --Flip666 12:31, 29 April 2010 (UTC)

Relations

The national routes should be linked together by relations. What type of relation do we use? Germany and Brazil use "type = route", "route = road" as proposed here: road routes. Another option are collected ways. --Flip666 11:41, 27 April 2010 (UTC)

There actually are some "proper" routes in how I understand them: e.g. the Trans-Kalahari Highway, spanning e.g. parts of B1 and B2. Using the "route" type for something like B1 in the first place would mix the semantics and might not be the best option. I'd rather go for Relation:street or (IMO slightly better) Relations/Proposed/Collected_Ways. (Of course, the Namibian killer argument is that "because Germany does it like this, we consider it neo-colonialism and therefore do it differently" :-), Jens 20:29, 28 April 2010 (UTC)

All countries in this list use "type = route", "route = road". And another not very political correct killer argument: South Africa is among them... ;-) --Flip666 12:22, 29 April 2010 (UTC)

You'd need relations if the roads ever have two or more ref numbers at the same time. There are places, especially in Europe, where a, say, secondary road that crosses a trunk road doesn't go straight over, but follows that higher classification road for some kilometers. The old way was to tag something like ref=A1;B51, but using route=road relations is considered a bit prettier solution, where needed. Same goes for any transnational or transcontinental routes, for example WikiProject_Europe/E-road_network. Depending on how the national routes are laid out in Namibia, it can make sense to do route=road relations for those roads that share a part with some other road with an another ref. Otherwise the ref tag alone is sufficient (aka. Relations_are_not_categories), although nothings gonna stop anyone from route=road relations for any signposted road. Alv 16:00, 29 April 2010 (UTC)

Street Names (Windhoek)

Hi there! I am living in Windhoek, Namibia and I am already working on especially the street names in Windhoek, but also the whole of Namibia. Cheers, Christian

My suggestions:

• We should keep to the fact that street names in Namibia are still changing, so it is vital for me to put the "old / historic" name in brackets behind the new street name (only in cases where the street name changed recently, e.g. in the last 2-3 years) and secondly use the "historic street name" tag to put in the historic (old) street name.
• As before independence in 1990 in case of street type "street" the type was only abbreviated, i.e. "Peter Mueller St". This was done due to the fact that we had three official languages at this point in time and by using "St" one could say "Street" (English), "Straat" (Afrikaans) and Strasse (German). This is still the fact and people based on their different home language still use those words. Thus I am only using the abbreviation "St". We should keep to this! (P.S. there are other cases (e.g. road, avenue, Weg, Hof, Platz) where this is a set part of the name. In this case I keep to these names, e.g. Sam Nujoma Drive, Jan Jonker Weg, etc.

-- Chtrede 12:38, 6 December 2010 (UTC)

I would recommend expanding 'St' to 'Street', it is easy for software to change Street to Straat/Straße or whatever, but it is really difficult to work out if St is Saint, Street, etc. You can also added name:xx= (eg: name:af= , name:de=) if there is a difference. -- Firefishy 13:00, 6 December 2010 (UTC)

Not agreeing as it is not the correct name. Most Namibian maps show just the name without any St, Street, Strasse, Straat or so. I think that would also be an option, e.h. "Moses Tjigongoro" instead of "Moses Tjigongoro St". Writing "Moses Tjigongoro Street" would only serve the English speaking people. One could obviously use e.g. name:af= , name:de= but why? Than one could also argue to always name them "Straße" and add e.g. name:en= and name:af=. Why should English be the basis? P.S. This "proplem" was by the way discussed weeks ago in the openstreetmao blog and was agreed on "St". Cheers -- Chtrede 15:11, 6 December 2010 (UTC)

If a road's name ends in 'St' on the road sign and due to the official language being English, I think it would be safe to assume that the road sign is abbreviating 'Street', in these cases I would personally recommend recording 'Street'. While unlikely to be common (but surprisingly common in South Africa) are 2 roads intersecting one called XX Road and the other XX Street. There are already tables to solve the language variations. I haven't been able to find the blog entry you mention. -- Firefishy 17:35, 6 December 2010 (UTC)

But it is by municipality law not the case. You get e.g. streets where it says on the one sign "Tjoringoro Street" (english), on another one "Tjoringoro Straat" (afrikaans). That is why most of the signs are now changed to "St" or just to a name without any Street, Avenue, Road or so... just to keep it open! -- Chtrede 09:46, 7 December 2010 (UTC)

But, if the road is in a German area and the locals say the abbreviation is strasse, I would fully agree by putting that as the name= entry. I just really really hate abbreviations. -- Firefishy 17:39, 6 December 2010 (UTC)

Tag: Service Road

Hi there. Service roads are only those once in industrial areas, otherwise small roads in residential areas which are not residential toas are "minor roads". Is this correct? -- Chtrede 12:41, 6 December 2010 (UTC)

Tag:highway=service linked with Key:service lists a number of cases where service roads are well suited. -- Firefishy 13:04, 6 December 2010 (UTC)

Thanks, but those examples are not really answering my question. What tag would be used for a small road within and industrial area (landuse=industrial) Right now there is mostly "residential" used, which is obviously wrong, as industrial areas are the opposite of residential areas and thus can not accommodate residential roads. I used "service road" for any small road in an industrial area, but I am not sure if I should instead rather use "minor road"? Thanks. -- Chtrede 15:14, 6 December 2010 (UTC)