9d38e4e7_OpenStreetMap__Post
[When] about 2 months ago [Comment] Thinks for the messages coming in from so many paths that I'm largely out of sync and in lag to many... I don't read my email as often as some may think so if I map before reading changeset comments might take 2 to 4 days to get noticed! they do get there in the end but they might be out of date by then. ok so lets try and answer some the flurry of points and counterpoints before we need to erect another memorial to martyrs south of the covered market [this for those not familiar to Oxford under discussion relates to the two memorials marking where Catholics were burned and killed during the civil-war in Christendom some centuries ago]. first I have been walking though these roads for a long time and all through the recent edit phase,(add have been out surveying again today) and have a good feel of the weight of traffic by length as well as number for most parts of the day and night (I usually walk though the site anytime upto about 1-3am in the morning as well as throughout the day and evenings). So unlike other areas I might map more lightly for less in depth info this is a spot I do no and from today have the ref's for every sign in the middle of the road and a proportion of the lamps and signals too, plus I could map fairly easily every manhole cover etc... So why did I change it from tertiary to Primary? Well several factors coalesced to get it done the week. One I had previously challenged the removal of Ref tags on these roads. As I had seen them in use and felt that that removal had been judgemental and incorrect kind of how people felt about me bumping up the priority of the High street. Incidentally it was the out of date ref:note tag that I referred to as out of date. As it clearly was - stating that the refs where not present when they now were again. Two the reasoning given in the note didn't really reflect what I saw on the ground which was a busy road dispite the restriction that people try to use when it was justified. I looked a lot at that confusion issue some have been mentioning about it being a through route and then not and I specificly added the first basic bus_gate barrier tags to help resolve the problem. ..but they didn't make it to many renderings and so people still became confused. thats when I invested 7 hours to mark the barrier in the area:highway system [that's been in the wiki-tagging "manual" in different forms for near 4 years at least. I had a lot of need for these when mapping the relations between narrow footways and wide roads and before sidewalks became known to me as separatable as I need to make so meny fictious ways to join stuff up even if the side walk made them less than a meter apart the centre of the road could be 5 or 10meters in places so the result was just horrible to look at and dificult to relate to the real landscape at the end. I did my homework on the wiki and tried adopt the tagging being asposed for us to use for this purpose. ..but again not everyone was reading from the same "hymn-sheet" and the discord was driving me nuts with people chngeing my contributions into tag sets that broke renders and routers alike. eventually I looked up what were the latest wiki options and posed it as a question on this diary system http://www.openstreetmap.org/user/Govanus/diary/24021 and then, upon advice from an reader of the entry, to the help questions system https://help.openstreetmap.org/questions/38079/latest-fashions-in-area-highways-and-the-plan-for-wash-common-coming-soon (it does vary between the two versions a bit as I tried to refine it etc). Which promptly failed to get any answers because it was closed prematurly for being a copy and paste of the diary entry. So so much for community help and consensus. So I pick a wiki type and blunderbust it into areas for others tidy or squabble over. So thirdly with having thought the confusion problem was solved. I looked at the anomaly of such a highly prioritised road that apparently wasn't because you couldn't drive a car through it all day. So I began importing the latest version of the Millennial Transport strategy - lorry part that should how planners wanted lorry and other access 24 hours a day. The road is used as a branching spine for lorry routes approching from opersite side of the barrier. (this process is not yet compleated for the whole city yet but about half might be complete (not such if it needs new tags etc..)) Fourthly all those previously stated reasons came into my head. Now I understand that by vehicles alone it might look less but what if those figures are weighted statistically by size, weight, road-wear, number of occupants in each vehicle and traffic jams of 12-9 buses with some vans thrown in is a bit more substantial than 12-9 cars in a row. Incidentally when I came into the library to write all this and do other stuff I clocked that that the traffic on Longwall backs up from the southern lights by the high street as far back as the Marston Cycleway at the corner by the parks.... So I wasn't impressed that it had been still redemoted for being "confusing" and an anomaly. There's less traffic at the top end of the A4158 (Iffley Road) especially after the junction with the B4495. I also don't believe that so much traffic from the A420 goes straight down the A4158 for instance - a Good chunk finds its way onto the A4165 and the A4144. Really if its such a massive contention why net let the highways authority sort it out - and yes they picked to make and keep it as a primary now if British B-roads (originally 25% non-local traffic) are tertiary so that the Supped Expressways like the E05/A34 are primary and the other minorised A roads (original 50% or more nationally funded for a lot of non-local traffic) then make some secondary but I loby for the B480 to go to a secondary A-road then. The B480 has so much built around it since the 1930's began. but then it local to non-local traffic not busyness that determined that after all there B road dual carriageways about the land and on the side of southpark in Oxford there is the remains of a white unclassified dual-carriageway Warnford Lane(to many students park in it to work properly now). So when local people find the tertiary setting an anomaly and very confusing to use the because of it. I might just crack under the evidence and start taking action. I'm happy to debate it, but I would like to remind renderers that make road maps that they should add barriered streets for the benefit of there users as this is how the whole Transport control system is designed to work around in Oxford at least. The adage is you can drive virtually anywhere but just not through anywhere. The other big point I reserlution on is an agreead area mapping standard that we all agree on implement or doge and so things and just be mapped in peace and the OSM mapping system improved. [Post] 
Oxford routes.
OpenStreetMap
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