|
Here in the USA the Forest Service is closing a lot of old logging roads. It is cheaper for them to close them than to maintain them to their standards so they won't get sued. You gotta love the American legal system. These roads might have some use when the all the forests that were "harvested" need to cut down again but the roads are in many cases being ripped up by heavy equipment. They are 100% closed - destroyed and left to re-vegetate. Most of these Forest Service roads were uploaded tiger files tagged as Highway: Residential. Should they or can they be deleted or tagged as closed somehow? I am not seeing the attributes in the drop down to do this.
This question is marked "community wiki".
|
|
It depends. If there is no more anything on the ground you can delete the way, but most likely there are still tracks along the old roads even if they are not maintained. In the later case you can retag the way to the new standards, but try not to delete a feature that is still on the ground. You might put a |
|
The forest service takes heavy equipment that is the eqivalant of a giant tiller and churns up the roads. Another thing they do is put in large mounds that are impassible even with supper high clearance vehicles. In addition to that they put large rocks to block them off. They do not just stop maintaining them. They are doing this to thousands of old logging roads. If we want to wait before deleting them is there some kind of tag for decommissioned or closed roads? I didn't see one. What do you mean by "new standards"? It would be nice if someone could add a tag like decommissioned or something to the pick lists. |
|
If a short stub still remains intact, shorten them. Then routers will be able to generate directions that still makes sense, for example "... third road on the left ..." If they appear on the relevant aerial imagery, tag them as access=no and, if you are really thorough, a note explaining their status. Unfortunately there are a few people in the project who would retrace them if you delete them. Otherwise delete them. After all, if they were not in the database, you would not go out to survey them. Preferably these should be focused change sets and the comment should explain why you are deleting them. |
|
Thanks Nic. There is really more work to be done in our area editing bulk uploaded tiger road files than adding any many new roads. My effort is to try to get people to add mountain bike trails. Many of the mountain bike trails criss cross old and new logging roads. In order for that to be relevant those logging roads need to be up to date. Many of the open ones do not have any number which is how they are usually "named". I wonder if anyone has given any thought to adding different symbology for closed roads, so there could be a tag like closed or access=no like you suggested AND it would show up with a different graphic symbol - color on the map. For some reason the email verification process with OSM is not working so I have to keep logging in to see any replies. I know that mapnik renders access=private and access=destination in different colours. Alternatively you could replace the 'highway' tag on closed roads with a note saying that we are waiting for new aerial imagery before removing them from the DB. Then they will no longer be rendered but anyone busy with tracing will see them and realize what's going on. The note will be important because a few users are quite keen to fix as many 'keepright' warnings as possible. I also struggled to get my email address verified for more than a month, but it did succeed earlier today. (using gmail).
(02 Nov '10, 18:44)
Nic Roets
|