Talk:Highway Tag Africa

What is the point?

No objections to your page, but what is your point? It is describing what we already have set. People mapping "wrong" by classifying primary roads as tracks because they are unpaved? This is what we call mapping for the renderer (map a feature as something else than it is in order to get the rendering you want) and is simply bad style. It is basically indice of an intermediate state because there aren't lots of mappers in these areas and the default "main" style doesn't differentiate between paved and unpaved roads. --Dieterdreist (talk) 12:25, 8 January 2014 (UTC)

For more discussions about this, you are invited to come and discuss on the Hot Discussion list.

From the Mali Activation experience in 2013, the Humanitarian OpenStreetMap Team decided to adopt a classification more appropriate to african countries.

The original page Mali Highway tag was later renamed to Highway Tag Africa.

Below are links to discussions on the HOT distribution list about this highway typology.

Rename to Highway Tag Africa Central-African-Republic-Bangui-taken-over-today-by-the-rebels

Kenyan or African OSM community? Kenyan-or-African-OSM-community

These wiki pages recommend to use this highway classification: Senegal Highway tag and WikiProject Central African Republic

-- pierzen (talk) 20:09, 8 January 2014 (UTC)

Images

There's an empty photos column. Could we use some Bing (or another) imagery snapshot to get the idea ?

I assume that most of the mappers that read this page map from imagery, so that could be useful to have some examples...

Maybe there's some licencing issue, like Bing is only allowed for tracing in OSM or something ?

--H@mlet (talk) 14:18, 18 April 2014 (UTC)

While it might be easy to represent road infrastructures in northern countries, there is less homogeneity in africa. We could simply remove the photo column.

pierzen (talk) 16:26, 18 April 2014 (UTC)

Well, I don't know... Paths and tracks usually look quite the same (with the same kind of surroundings). I'll try to find you some examples next week, to try to make my point ! ;-) --H@mlet (talk) 16:57, 18 April 2014 (UTC)

Trunk ways

The suggestions in this article could probably be applied generically to other countries, even developed ones. But a definition for trunk ways in Africa is currently missing.

I don't have deep knowledge of differences within the continent, but apparently in Nigeria and Ghana trunk ways are associated with national routes ("A" routes in Nigeria and "N" routes in Ghana). This would be the same criteria adopted in various other countries (Argentina, Paraguay, Bolivia, Peru, Canada, Australia, etc.).

The article also describes these roads as connecting place=*, whose definition may depend on administrative/political status or, if that is not yet established, based on total population. Because of that, I think it makes sense considering trunk ways those (and perhaps only those) that connect places that are considered  metropolises. If an assignment between OSM place definitions and local administrative/political status is missing, I think it makes sense to define a "metropolis" as a city with more than 1 million people.

I'm pretty sure that this definition would automatically include all roads in the  Trans-African Highway network.--Fernando Trebien (talk) 16:03, 2 June 2015 (UTC)

There is now a definition for trunk roads, which seems to follow the British idea of trunk roads. It seems to contradict what the communities of some African countries have documented elsewhere, for example Morocco here: Tag:highway=trunk#International_equivalence. Can you explain to which countries the page applies, and where I can find the discussions that led to the current definition? --Dieterdreist (talk) 20:28, 15 February 2021 (UTC)

Mateusz changed the wiki, I was waiting for the discussion to unfold. As the previous change does not point to any discussion, I suspect it may have been wikifiddling. But in any case, the Moroccan community can certainly adopt its own restrictive rules while only other African countries currently do not. --Fernando Trebien (talk) 22:55, 15 February 2021 (UTC)

Yes, I did it based on info that was available at that time after I noticed comment linking https://lists.openstreetmap.org/pipermail/hot/2021-January/015453.html . It had a convincing evidence that what was presented there was incorrect, so I made the edit. I added mention of Morocco now. In general, Wiki can be easily edited/reverted - and common issue is that someone notices clearly wrong description on Wiki, there is a long discussion about it and later noone changes anything. Feel free to revert OSM Wiki changes that I made if something was incorrect (in general it is not feasible to make full scale proposal before every edit on OSM Wiki). Mateusz Konieczny (talk) 06:51, 16 February 2021 (UTC)

I started the topic because it seems completely absurd to me to demand high standards from developing countries, where these standards are not required even in rich and fully developed countries. On the HOT mailing list, it appears that only one person would object to the "new" (most widely used worldwide) definition, 2 would support it (perhaps with minor changes to the text), 1 seems friendly to the idea and 1 seems neutral. Not many people are involved, but at least this time there is some visible discussion about it. --Fernando Trebien (talk) 11:28, 16 February 2021 (UTC)

To me it seems completely absurd, as there are roads of all kinds in Africa as well, to change the requirements for trunks, so that it will not be possible any more to distinguish motorway like roads which aren't motorways from other important roads which are built to lower standards. If there are very few trunks, so be it, what's the problem? --Dieterdreist (talk) 00:00, 19 February 2021 (UTC)

By lower standards, are you possibly referring to trunk roads like Cat and Fiddle Road in England, Ring Road in Iceland, Kolyma Highway in Russia, or maybe Stuart Highway in Australia? Examples like these can easily be found in many other countries. --Fernando Trebien (talk) 00:38, 19 February 2021 (UTC)

You can use tags such as surface=*, lanes=*, motorway=*, expressway=* and so on for distinguishing physical characteristic of road. "If there are very few trunks, so be it, what's the problem?" - it makes nearly impossible to make map style showing basic road network (speaking as person who was implementing road style in Default map style). highway=trunk used properly, for basic road network is very useful here Mateusz Konieczny (talk) 03:34, 19 February 2021 (UTC)

other crossings

I just translated the page to german when I was stucked with the section other crossings the informations there seems to be repeated, don't they? Hakuch (talk) 22:51, 20 January 2016 (UTC)

This part seems to have been changed. In the translation I made, there is more focus on ford=yes versus flood_prone=yes. Where the first is for normal river crossings where you have to just drive through the water, and flood prone for exceptional situations. The focus in the English version on flood_prone is a bit weird to me, as ford is used 10 times more than ford... Joost schouppe (talk) 14:19, 22 January 2016 (UTC)

I think that Joost is saying and what I too think + that it is simple and clear: Crossings of any waterway=* when they don't have a bridge=* or a tunnel=culvert or other tunnel=* for that matter -- ie. when the road crosses the waterway in the same level (in principle level=0 but zero is never used as a layer value as it's the deault -- should simply be tagged with ford=yes (on either then node of the road that crosses with the waterway or on the bit of the road that crosses a waterway that also has waterway=riverbank drawn around it.

As for the low-level or flood_prone bridges that may be at times under water or those that are even regularly submerged, e.g. during rainy season or other intermittent rains, one should use the bridge=low_water_crossing tag (as usual) for the bit of road that is on top of that bridge structure. As it is instructed (and makes sense) one can add flood_prone=yes to the bridge. (It's also instructed that one could use ford=yes but I think that is simply wrong as the "ford" in question is only intermittent/seasonal and would hence require intermittent/seasonal=yes to tell the reality -- and that would get messy as it could be seen as to imply that the bridge is intermittent/seasonal as is the case with ice roads in a similar-ish manner.)

For more details and discussion about these bridge page #Values section and the talk page of the article are good reading.

I'll edit the page as explained above. Just wanted to explain the edit here so there's no further confusion. --JaakkoH (talk) 21:12, 13 April 2016 (UTC)

Note: I tweaked both the Other crossings a bit more than noted above. The low_water_crossing, while technically not a bridge (see bridge=* discussion page for details is in practice a bridge and I moved it there -- explaining it additionally in the flood prone part. I also made some general (but IMO not that major) edits to structure of the text for (hopefully) improved clarity. Please check if you think it's better or worse now in your opinion. --JaakkoH (talk) 22:33, 13 April 2016 (UTC)

Mailing list

To support mailing list discussion, this is the content of the slide: from this presentation https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1xFDiMaWRj1RBlXzVYlKp06yE2Ja9Q5rmD9-bPDp1TWo/edit#slide=id.g2326c0c777_5_390

The slide says:

• Can it be passed by a vehicle? → unclassified (or better) / residential / track (not path)
• Does it connect areas where people live (running within and through villages)? → Unclassified or better (not residential / not track)
• Does the road only run within a village or residential areas (not a through-road) → residential
• Does the road only run to fields (agric. use)? → track
• Is it not passable by car (4x4)? → path
• Note: A metal roof arrives by vehicle → roads to houses with metal roofs are unclassified or residential (not path).

Trunk ways motorway-like?

This edit defined trunks as "motorway-like" and presented an example image with a divided highway. I did not find any discussion on this. I'm seeing many trunks in Africa that are not divided. I think it may be interesting to clarify what is meant by "motorway-like", whether it means some sort of physical structure (such as the number of lanes and divided carriageways) or importance. If it is importance, then what I see in the map makes sense and it should probably be better to describe them that way to avoid confusion. --Fernando Trebien (talk) 15:04, 19 July 2020 (UTC)

I just noticed you have been discussing the trunk definition on the HOT mailing list recently: [1]. IMHO this change (adopting the British trunk definition) was not helpful, and my guess would be you have not revisited the complete African road network either, so it created more inconsistencies. I would plea for reverting this to require a motorway like layout (no at-grade intersections) without being actually a motorway. If there aren't many of such roads currently in African countries then simply the tag will not be used very often. There is no need for another "ordinary" road class above primary, as there are already unclassified, tertiary, secondary and primary for connection roads. --Dieterdreist (talk) 09:16, 16 February 2021 (UTC)

"reverting this to require a motorway like layout (no at-grade intersections) without being actually a motorway" - why? Highway tag is supposed to be about importance for the road grid (hierarchical position in the interconnecting network) instead of physical attributes. Though looking at who proposed Proposed features/Highway key voting importance I am curious what made you change the mind on this topic Mateusz Konieczny (talk) 15:16, 16 February 2021 (UTC)

I am equally surprised. Dieterdreist, I suggest that you take a quick look at the infrastructure of a small sample of roads currently mapped as highway=trunk in different African countries. Some popular services can provide a view from the ground in many of these countries. --Fernando Trebien (talk) 23:50, 18 February 2021 (UTC)

Which Africa?

At the bottom of the page there is a link to tagging guidelines for East Africa. The linked page states: "East Africa at least comprises the countries Kenya, Tanzania, Uganda, Rwanda, Burundi, and South Sudan.". Which are the countries or areas/regions to which this page applies? --Dieterdreist (talk) 20:44, 15 February 2021 (UTC)